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The Dorr Letters ProjectThomas Wilson Dorr to Lydia Allen Dorr: |
Letter
Oct. 11th, Frid. Evening. -
Dear M.
Yours of the 5th ‸Oct. gave me much gratification; and I hope
I hear from you as often as opportunity will permit; although, as you re-
mark, I am not “a man of this world”, and I am in fact at a point somewhere
between your world and the next, much curiously remains to know what is pass
-ing in the old places with which I was familiar, and the my memory of kind
and affectionate friends is faithful and vivid. But you seem hardly aware
of the difficulty on my side in making the full replies I could wish to send to you.
I must write by snatches, and when observation is not active, and not long before an
opportunity ‸will recur of passing along what I have prepared. You suggest to me the
keeping of a journal without reflecting upon the impolicy of so doing. It must either
be written subject to the examination of the warden (which you would not desire) & inspectors, or it must be
a secret liable to be disclosed by the right of search, against which it is well to
guard by having nothing on hand to be seized by the police of the prison. No search
has yet been made in my cell; and I take care that it shall avail nothing if
made. The two letters I ‸saved & sent back to be preserved were exceptions to the general rule.
All I now have on hand ‸(beside this letter) is some newspaper scraps ‸(in a safe place), which I shall send to you, and
some pocket memoranda, mostly in Latin, and so abbreviated that they cannot be inter-
preted, and I am sometimes at a loss to know what I have recorded. —
Is there such a paper now in existence as the Independent? A whisper seems to float upon the breeze
that “all is
well in Penn
sylvania"?
My health remains about the same. This is not a place to
gain strength of course, nor remarkably adapted to bilious and rheumatic cases,
especially when air and exercise on the outside are interdicted. I have involved
the “proprietors” in a contradiction in the matter of exercise ‸out of doors, and wound them
rife with a lie among them somewhere. The physician on Monday again
referred me to the inspectors, as having sole jurisdiction of the matter. On Wed-
nesday inspector Everett referred me to the physician for his recommendation
Many thanks for your renewed offer to procure for me anything I may
need and which a pocket can convey. Of the shirts I have already spoken—they are
inadmissible. The myrrh and charcoal for the torch were received. I have four
pairs of stockings in good order though my darning, which is strong, however uncome-
ly to a woman’s eye. I have a good tooth brush, which will last sometime longer.
How strangely the Protestants cast aside their dead! After the
solemnities of the grave ‸are passed, and a stone is erected, all is over, and the loved and lost
are regarded as if they had never been. The insignia of the grave may become
dilapidated; but who goes to repair the fallow monument, or to walk among the
tombs, when the sacred dust of the departed is gathered for the day of resurrection?
It is not so with the Catholics. They regard the dead ‸not as lost and to be
forgotten, but as gone before; and they endeavor to make the church yard a
garden of the dead, and to beautify and adorn it, and to divest it of all
repulsive associations, so as to make ‸convert it ‸into a place of willing resort, and med-
itation. These thoughts recurred to me as I read the passing in your last, in
which you refer to the disclosure of the tomb of Gabriel Bernon, the princi-
pal founder of St. John’s Church, whose remains were deposited in in the cellar,
without any external sign opening to indicate the[...] ‸place of deposit, and are now brought to light ‸whose grave-stone is now made visible by
cutting a window, to admit the light upon a new furnace to warm the
building! Shameful! Had Bernon been a Catholic, and as devoted a son
of the Romish as ‸he was of the Reformed church, every child in the congregation would
have the story of his virtues and sacrifices at the tongues end. But, as if
probably there are not half a dozen persons, out of the families of his descendants,
who ever heard that such a man existed. Is it not Protestantism at fault here?
Are our departed friends all dead? Is there nothing that survives the grave,
and which the grave may recall to the memory of those who remain? God is
not the Lord of the dead but of the living. –
Allow me to say to you in turn, my dear Mother, that I hope
you will pay more attention to your health, and not impair it by confining
yourself too much at home, but walk more abroad. I am trying Sand’s sar-
saparilla, which comes in a concentrated and palatable form, not loaded with
syrup, and is good for bile. – Will you not buy it make the experiment for
your rheumatic troubles? –
The daughter of A. Robbins, who called upon you, was,
I presume, Mrs. Little, the author of some religious poems. She is doubtless a
worthy member of the household of faith.
Much happiness to little P. who ought to have been
married long ago, all thing favoring that consummation. What is to become of
R. J. A. if Philip Jr have his house?
If your communications from me were to be spoken of, I should
desire my regards to Allen, who so kindly remembered me, and wished me all
his gathering of grapes. Those you send (the pears also) are delicious. Fruit
of any kind is a great treat here; and I thank you for bearing in mind so
often that I have such a taste for it.
Now that your family is so much diminished by departures marriage &c,
and you have so much more leisure in the evening, I presume much of the
time will be devoted to the perusal of the arrears of good reading, which
have been accumulating for years past. But Sullivan will soon be at home,
and will have a long list of adorations to relate, and in a manner which will
contribute ‸much to your amusement. My evenings, as you observe, are solitary; and so
are the days, excepting occasionally a few words with the underkeepers, and
brief occasional call ‸at my cell from Mr Warden. To the 1st of this month I generally
went to bed at dark. Work is now carried on in the evening till 8 o’clock,
and the regulations require the lights to be removed from the cells by 9. The
work I perform fatigues me very much, and I feel a disposition to retire early.
I believe I did not mention that Dr. Woods ‸the chaplain, in a discourse on
the ten commandments, did not ≠ omit to speak of the impropriety of taking pub
lic as well as private property ‸(a hit at the People’s officers). He added that those men most apt to obey the
Commands of ‸civil government, who had been the most obedient at home. And I
understand that Rev. Dr Tucker (who prayed so heartily for the success of the People’s
cause, in the convention which framed their Constitution) remarked that you
had not in my case, at a juvenile period, made a sufficient use of the grand
prescription of King Solomon (“he that spareth” so) – So you see we have it
on all sides from our clerical friends.
Mr A., on his last visit, alluded sadly to the death of his young-
est boy; which was also the subject of an affecting passage in your letter. I am glad to hear
that Mary is sustained under this affliction by a strength greater than her own.
I feel tired and must bring my letter to a close and go to rest. My true
regards to yourself & Father. His anxiety and troubles on my account, I hope will have an end; and that
the latter days may be ‸to him the best.
Please say to Mr Burges that there can be no objection to commenting public-
ly on the conduct of the Inspectors, without quoting me as authority. Say also to Mr Burges that I am always glad to hear from him, & that whether [...] is [...] T.W.D.