David Marshall Jamesby David Marshall James
First published in Fall, 2009, Volume 6, Issue 2, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
For more than two months, the household had experienced a peace that had not existed during the past three years. Or so, at least, thought Mrs. Andrew Borden, although she never would have voiced the sentiment to her husband. To be sure, he had also savored the tranquility that had flourished during the absence of his younger daughter, Miss Lizzie Borden, who had been abroad for the duration of this not-altogether-unexpected flowering of calm at No. 92 Second Street, a bustling thoroughfare of residences and businesses in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Indeed, Lizzie had received his blessings—and what he considered a substantial purse—at her embarkation upon a grand tour of Europe at the outset of the summer of 1890. Mr. Borden fervently hoped that she might satiate many unfulfilled desires via her travels and thus return to the family fold a veritable tabula rasa—a cleaned slate of fresh possibilities and much-improved attitude—who no longer fomented strife in the household, particularly insofar as her stepmother, Mrs. Borden, was concerned.
Meanwhile, Lizzie’s older sister, Emma, kept to herself as best she could. She had never accustomed herself to her stepmother, although she did not actively provoke her, as the impetuous Lizzie had been doing, with increasing frequency, ever since their Father had effected a real-estate transaction felicitous to the half-sister of his daughters’ stepmother.
Money—especially when it is lying about in large piles, in vaults, or running to figures ending in multiple zeroes, on ledger sheets—can swiftly come between the members of even the most closely knit families. And, there was no denying that Andrew Borden’s unspent fortune had created substantial wedges between his daughters and their stepmother.
Lizzie would not have dared to undertake her journey abroad—as much as she was desirous of so doing—if Emma were to have been absent as well from No. 92. For then, who would have borne witness to yet another possible fiduciary indiscretion by Mr. Borden on behalf of another one of his wife’s needy relatives?
Bridget Sullivan, the Bordens’ housekeeper and cook, appeared more interested in the activities of the Daughters of Erin who also tended hearths and homes in the vicinity. Nevertheless, Miss Sullivan could not help overhearing some family conversations, and certainly their squabbles. She did not listen at keyholes, however, yet anything mentioned within earshot was fair game. After all, a body must ascertain the lay of the land in order to stay in-step with the lord and lady of the manor.
Thus it was, with Lizzie in extended absentia, that everyone in the Borden household, to some degree or another, had been pleasantly receptive of the newfound peace. Emma, too, who stood sentinel against further fiscal slights by her Father, could not help but feel the lightness in the air: an uncoiling of some of the tensions that were pulled taut by Lizzie’s general demeanor, her actions, and opinions.
Which is not to say the Emma was altogether glad of her sister’s missing presence. No, she required Lizzie as an ally in matters of thorn and thicket pertaining to money and property. Lizzie was, after all, on her side, and what a formidable front she established for Emma, with her bold impertinence of speech, her swiftness to chide. However, with no pressing need of a united front against some plot by Mr. Borden to usurp assets rightfully belonging to his two daughters (in future, if not in present). Emma was content enough not to miss her younger sister
every waking moment.
Nevertheless, even at a distance of some three thousand miles, Lizzie remained capable of dropping an incendiary bomb upon the recently quieted battlefield at No. 92. Her missile arrived in the form of two missives—one to her Father, the other to her sister—posted from the Russell Square Hotel, London, the week before. In the first epistle, Lizzie wrote:
Dear Father,
It is with both the greatest trepidation and the greatest elation that I have accepted a teaching position at the Chalmondeley Academy, here in Russell Square. Miss Clara Chalmondeley has been actively seeking an American Lady, in particular a Proper New England Lady, to add an “American Voice” to the cosmopolitan atmosphere that is the special quality of her academy.
When Mrs. Chalmondeley heard about our group, and where we lived, she invited us to a lovely tea at her establishment, and I must say the whole of the place is of the Highest Order. None of the younger ones who accompanied me gave the offer a second thought, but I believe it would amount to a fine experience. I am to be afforded room and board, even between terms, plus wages (the equivalent of eight dollars per week), as well as an array of cultural and travel opportunities attendant to the curriculum.
I realize this is all so sudden, but I had a terrible dream this past night, which was the final push for me to accept the position this very morning. In my dream, I had returned home, but I was in prison. It was all too real and very vivid, and it put the fear of the Lord in me. Yes, I know it could never happen, but it was something that affected me deeply. I am certain, in time, that I shall have pleasant dreams of home, and that I shall come back, some time, between terms. For the present, I remain—Your Loving and Devoted Daughter, Lizzie Andrew Borden
After reading the letter to his wife in the sitting room (Bridget strained to hear while chopping carrots in the kitchen), Mr. Borden folded it in fourths, then stuffed it into one of his waistcoat pockets. “Well,” he continued, “I don’t wonder that she’ll cash in what’s left of her ticket, then expect me to pay for her next voyage, which will doubtless occur much sooner than she anticipates. Prison? She makes a prison for herself in her room upstairs. This Englishwoman has taken on more than she’s bargained for.”
Mrs. Borden kept her silence—her joyful, grateful silence. Now, she thought, if Lizzie would just marry herself an Englishman and settle there for good. Perhaps they weren’t as selective as the men back here, and would be delighted to have an American, at that. Mr. Borden continued, “I wonder what she wrote to Emma. Probably wants her to sell the house on Ferry Street and send her half the proceeds. She’ll run through everything she has soon enough, and then she can ask Queen Victoria for a loan.”
Emma, stricken to her core, had listened at the door to the kitchen while her Father read Lizzie’s letter aloud. Halfway through, he had interjected a commentary: “How’s that for a surprise, Emma? Lizzie’s gone and torn down your playhouse, hasn’t she? Well, I wouldn’t worry much, if I were you. Those high-aired little English girls will send Lizzie packing within a week. Remember what happened at the Sunday School, when she could not control her charges? She doesn’t stand a Chinaman’s chance in that fancified academy.”
As soon as Mr. Borden had read Lizzie’s closing, Emma slipped out to the backyard for some much-needed fresh air. The pear tree was still in luscious fruit. Feeling weak, she plucked a ripened pear and bit into it, savoring the juicy sweetness that she hoped would invigorate her. She withdrew her sister’s letter from her apron pocket, where she had hastily secured it, sending a clear message that she had no intention of sharing it. “Dearest Sister,” it began:
I now need you near me as much as I did when I was a toddler, and we had lost our one true Mother. You must think that I am out of my mind, making such a rash decision, but this is a golden opportunity, not to return to that miserable house. If Father is determined to favor Mrs. Borden with all he possesses, then I am powerless to change his mind, I fear, without one long battle after another, which will only serve our interests to the contrary.
Emma, I have come to an important realization: Our continued presence in the house may be working against us. I do believe absence will make his heart grow fonder, especially when he must face Mrs. Borden day in and day out. If the sound of her slurping up her broth is music to his hairy old ears, then so be it. If I must watch that old bat flicking the dust about the parlor once more, I’ll pick up something and smash her skull.
Furthermore, Dear Sister, I have been suffering terrible nightmares, filled with similar images. It’s as if I were accused of being a witch in Old Salem, and the town is preparing to have me set in stocks, or hanged, or buried under stones. I awake gasping for breath, with my heart pounding fiercely. I can assure you that I have no inclinations toward returning until such dreams abate.
My Dear Emma, I implore you: Give Father back the deed to the house on Ferry Street. Perhaps, then, he will see that we intend to make our amends. Perhaps it will stand us in better stead with him, for the betterment of our future. Please join me here. Miss Chalmondeley, a most learned and gracious lady, also needs a tutor for the slower-learning pupils, and she is cheerfully amenable to your sharing my room, and to supplying your board, as well as wages equivalent to mine. I can assure you that the rooms (and all of the academy, for that matter) are a far-and-away improvement over that house.
Dearest Sister, it is beautiful here in Russell Square! You may walk to the British Museum, and we may journey to the Highlands between terms! Please come be with me, at your earliest possible convenience! You will be many more times a comfort to me, in so doing, than you have ever been before. Your Loving Sister, Lizzie
Emma pondered her sister’s entreaties, finished her pear, then entered the house by the side door, hastening to the kitchen stove, wherein she burned the letter. How could Lizzie have placed her in such an awful bind? What would become of their inheritance if she, Emma, left Mrs. Borden by herself and to her own devices, to hold sway over
the future of Father’s fortune? Why couldn’t Lizzie comprehend that they were throwing thousands of gold coins down a well? Yet, Lizzie needed her—wasn’t that what mattered most, above all?
That night, a dream decided the dilemma for Emma—a shockingly detailed dream in which Lizzie and Emma were both inside a jail, both weeping, with a matron hovering close, attempting to reassure them. As Emma bolted upright in bed, gasping for air and shaking violently, she could not suppress the fear that she had experienced a portent, particularly because her nightmare was so similar to her sister’s. What if these ghastly visions were to transpire? What if Mrs. Borden arranged for Father’s murder, then set them up as the culprits?
Mrs. Borden could throw so much up against them: How aloof and how distant they had acted in recent years, since the dispute over Mrs. Borden’s half-sister’s house. Her family would support her cause. Who would support the cause of Lizzie and Emma? Lizzie had been most incautiously deliberate in conveying her dislike of Mrs. Borden, including to many people she scarcely knew. Would they come forward and stand against Lizzie, if she were accused?
Emma concluded that she—and Lizzie—might well encounter a most grievous fate, should they remain. Several hours before dawn, Emma lit a kerosene lamp, then composed a letter to her sister:
Dear Lizzie,
I have just awakened from a most frightful nightmare, of the sort of which you mention. Now, I, too, am convinced that neither one of us is meant to keep on in this house for the time being, I fear. Today, I am withdrawing a large sum from my account and am boarding a train to Boston, where I am booking passage on the first passenger liner bound for England. I may therefore be at sea tonight. I shall take a room in the city if I must wait, or else attempt to depart from New York.
Please arrange for my bed, tutoring, and the whole of it.
I shall leave it up to Father to collect rents on our shared property, or what he will. I must hasten to pack my steamer trunk, and to write a few brief letters of explanation to friends and relations, to whom I shall note our new address. They can thus spread the word of our departure, and to where we have relocated. I shall have an envelope ready to post to you from Boston, when I am certain of the ship on which I shall book passage. Hurriedly, Your Loving Sister, Emma
Upon completing the other letters, Emma pulled her steamer trunk from beneath her bed, then commenced filling it with everything she had in the clothes press at the landing of the front stairs, as well as the contents of her own small closet and chest of drawers. As soon as the livery stable across Second Street opened, she would secure a driver and carriage to transport her to the post office, the bank, and then the railway station.
First, she explained her plans—cloaked in the guise of a ruse—to her Father, who was seated upon the horsehair-stuffed sofa in the sitting room downstairs, awaiting the descent of his wife from her morning oblations upstairs. Meanwhile, Bridget bustled and huffed about the kitchen, preparing the morning repast. “Father, I understand that I am departing in the utmost haste, but my intent is to retrieve Lizzie as soon as possible. You will see to the rents on Ferry Street, I trust. No need to forward those. There are matters of complaints and upkeep.”
“You are not an impulsive person, Emma, so I trust your judgment in this affair. Here,” he continued, reaching into his billfold, “are thirty-two dollars to assist you in your travels. It is, of course, the sum total of your combined allowances, for the course of a month. I still believe that this journey is rather unnecessary, that Lizzie will be home within the month, although you will save her from at least some of the discord that she will naturally encounter. Now, I’ll see to the carriage.”
While Emma checked her carpetbag and purse, Bridget appeared with a basket from the kitchen: “Here’s for you, Miss Emma. There’s some bananas and pears, some cookies, and some freshly hot johnnycakes. Can’t travel around the world on an empty stomach. Would you be wantin’ a slice or two of the mutton, as well?”
“Thank you, Maggie, but this is more than enough.”
“You’ll be after givin’ m’regards to Miss Lizzie, now?”
“I shall at that.”
“Should you be meetin’ up with any Irish lads, you’ll be tellin’ ’em how to write to me, will you?”
“Only if they prove suitable.”
“If they’re not about the pub all day, then they’re suitable.”
Emma was profoundly relieved that she was out the front door before Mrs. Borden descended the back stairs, as Emma felt no compunction to shake her hand, much less to embrace her, or to engage in tender words of parting. After the driver retrieved her trunk from up the twisting front stairs—a task that no one in the household could have single-handedly accomplished—and stowed it on the back of the carriage, Emma kissed her Father lightly on the cheek. “I could have carried you to the station,” he shook his head. “Hiring a driver—that is an unnecessary extravagance.”
Emma did not explain that she had private business to which to attend, at the Union Savings Bank. Instead, she responded, “Dear Father, you and I together could not have managed my steamer trunk, neither down the stairs, nor at the station.”
He stood at the front door, still shaking his head, as the carriage moved beyond the picket fence separating the narrow confines of No. 92 Second Street from the World at large—a World into which Emma now entered, sensing more than a little of the enthusiasm expressed by Lizzie in her latest letter.
They stopped first at the Post Office on Third Street, where Emma mailed her letters, then continued to the Union Savings Bank, where she withdrew two-thousand dollars from her savings account—a bit less than half of the total. They proceeded to the railway station, where she boarded a train for Boston. By the end of the week, Emma had booked passage on the S.S. Tritonia, bound for Liverpool. During her stay over in Boston, she composed more letters to friends and relations, explicating her plan to join Lizzie in London, and her fervent hopes for the success of their conjoined futures.
Emma embarked on far more than an ocean voyage. It was no less than the dawning of the most remarkable and rewarding chapter of her life, one that would be set off from the previous pages of that life in illuminated script, with gilt-edged borders, as she commenced a seemingly endless variety of spiritually rewarding happenings and events. Later, Emma would reflect, that it was as if she had been
living underground—in a cellar—and that on her first day aboard the Tritonia, she at last escaped from the darkness below and ascended into the clear, fresh air above. She felt nothing less than reborn.
At Russell Square, Emma and Lizzie became both teachers and pupils under the direction of Miss Clara Chalmondeley, one of the most broadly learned and cultured women of her era. The daughter of a railway tycoon who had amassed another fortune in the shipping business, Miss Chalmondeley had traveled extensively throughout Europe, to the major cities of Russia, and across the Orient. She had seen the deserts of North Africa as well as those of the Middle East and Persia. She had had studied at dozens of universities and visited libraries where she had read ancient texts in their original Latin, Greek, and Arabic. She promoted women’s education for its own sake, steadfastly believing that every enlightened mind helped to brighten the World.
Her philosophy lifted the Borden sisters up the slopes of Parnassus. Emma and Lizzie expanded their reading to volumes recommended by their employer and tutor. Most important, the sisters acquired their mentor’s teaching methods—to excite the mind and to instill a lifelong love of learning by venturing outside of the classroom. The British Museum was a few steps away, in Russell Square, and not a day went by without Miss Chalmondeley’s pupils examining some small portion of its phenomenal collections. Additionally, there were trips to visit the great cathedrals of Salisbury and York, of Canterbury and Winchester. Excursions to Oxford and Cambridge abounded, as well as field trips to view Roman and Celtic ruins.
Emma and Lizzie soaked up every iota of information made available by such pilgrimages of learning. As the weeks turned into months, the voids that they had filled with negativity within the narrow confines of No. 92 were now overflowing with art and music, with science and literature, with the finest manifestations of the human spirit. They wrote glowingly of their personal renaissances, yet Mr. Borden viewed such enthusiastic accounts as thinly veiled pleas for additional funds. The Borden sisters would receive terse messages folded over checks for ten, perhaps twenty, dollars: “I cannot send you your full allowances this month, as there are many articles that your Mother requires for the household.”
His intent may have been to rile them, to aggravate the sources of their former upsets and agitations, yet the two sisters were, in fact, getting by well enough on their teaching salaries without further assistance from their unsympathetic Father. Lizzie turned over her weekly wages to Emma, who squirreled everything away until they had enough for a small shopping spree, or else a between-terms trip. They indulged their affection for the Scottish Highlands; indeed, they were just returned from Inverness when they received word, in February 1893, that Mrs. Borden had perished from a widespread outbreak of influenza, while Mr. Borden’s case of same had lapsed into pneumonia, and he had succumbed not quite a week following her death. Andrew Jennings, attorney for the family, urged Emma and Lizzie to return to Fall River in order to take care of the many pressing concerns pertaining to their father’s estate, of which they were joint heirs.
Lizzie managed to convince Emma to go on ahead without her, while she finished out the next term with Miss Chalmondeley. “After all, what may I do for Father, now that he is gone? Emma, I trust
you, as always, to do what is right for the both of us.”
The months following in London afforded Lizzie the opportunity to discuss with her employer and mentor, at length, her plans to open an institution founded along the lines of the Chalmondeley Academy, near Fall River: “We already possess a most suitable property—a farm in Swansea—that’s most attractive. The country atmosphere would draw young ladies from the cities.”
“It sounds indeed as if you are on to something, Lizzie, and I should very much like to be a part of it, if I may.”
“You know that I am enlisting every ounce of aid and advice that you wish to supply,” Lizzie beamed.
“I have brought the Chalmondeley Academy up to the summit I had in view when I commenced my work, implementing my dreams here. I should have no qualms about leaving it in the charge of my highly capable sister, Cornelia. I should quite like to be at your side, in your United States, for a spell, in order to travel and to learn, and particularly to assist you in realizing your dream, as I have realized mine. In so doing, we have expanded—and shall continue to expand—the enlightenment and progress of young womanhood.”
Miss Chalmondeley spent the following five years in America, providing invaluable encouragement, advice, and hard work for Lizzie and Emma in the foundation of the Borden Academy for Young Ladies. As with all such endeavors, nothing forwarded its future as much as word-of-mouth, and the B.A.’s alumnae proved an enthusiastic and rapidly expanding group. During the decades to follow, their daughters and granddaughters would serve to multiply the fold. A certificate of graduation from the B.A. meant a ticket for admission at any of the Seven Sisters—or, for that matter, at any coeducational college or university in the country.
Lizzie went on to earn a degree in classics from Radcliffe College, and to become a nationally known—and most favorably received—speaker on topics relating to the education of women. She traversed the length and breadth of the nation, as each state legislature considered ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to The Constitution. Many of her distinguished colleagues and alumnae encouraged her to seek political office, yet she always politely demurred to such appeals: “I fervently believe that I shall have attained higher office if one of my graduates should some day achieve such a goal, and I fully expect that to happen. I am content to change the World for the better by educating its Youth to carry the torch.”
Lizzie lived to see the B.A. into its fourth decade. Emma and Miss Chalmondeley had predeceased her, not without establishing substantial foundations for the institution. In their honor, Lizzie named a new academics building after Emma, while the academy’s fist freestanding library was commemorated with the name of Miss Chalmondeley. At the time of her death, Lizzie rested secure in the knowledge that her beloved B.A. would be maintained well and wisely, with one of its alumnae as headmistress, many of its former pupils as instructors, and more than half of its board of trustees consisting of its graduates.
In 1960, on the centennial of her birthday, the city of Fall River erected a larger-than- life-sized statue of Lizzie Andrew Borden—looking for all the world like an apple-cheeked grandmother—with her beloved dogs carved into stone alongside her. The legend on the base of the monument did not bear her name. It read, simply: “The most famous citizen of Fall River.”
Lizzie Borden awoke from a deep slumber before the fireplace in her bedroom at Maplecroft, the mansion on French Street in Fall River that she had purchased following her acquittal on charges for the murders of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Borden on the morning of August 4, 1892. Along with her older sister, Emma, she had inherited half of her Father’s fortune.
Lizzie gazed pensively into the dying embers for a long time—for how long, she could not say. The volume of poetry atop the richly carved mahogany table next to her pale-pink silk-covered armchair remained open to the verses she had been reading, from John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Maud Muller”:
Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go.
. . . .
God pity them both! And pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been.”
