for the day and suggested that they have a picnic in the meadow near the school. Barton herself was shocked by this episode, which was her only experience with corporal punishment. It made an impression so lasting that in 1908 she would write that “all these years have not been able to efface [it].” Needless to say, it put an end to trouble in the school for that term. “I had learnt what discipline meant, and it was for all time as far as that school was concerned; none ever needed more than a kindly smile.”13
The control Barton exercised over this school further enhanced her reputation. She was asked to teach it again the next year, and for nearly ten years her services were actively sought in both Oxford and the surrounding area. Rarely did she teach the same school twice. Though she allowed her older students a certain leeway in the subjects they studied, she was not an innovator in matters of curriculum; rather, she was challenged by the organization and discipline of the school. It intrigued her to ferret out the unique problems of each schoolhouse and to channel her pupils’ energies into study instead of mischief. But once the problems were conquered and the school settled down to a contented routine, Clara's active mind became distracted. For this reason she refused to teach again in Charlton, and after a short, unchallenging term at another neighboring town called West Millbury, she again sought a more demanding position. She was pleased, therefore, when the school board in Oxford requested that she teach the winter term of a particularly difficult school. When they offered her the salary usually paid women for the shorter and easier summer session, however, she declined. “I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing,” she told the board, “but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay.” It was a measure of Barton's growing confidence that she felt emboldened to make such a demand, and of her value as a teacher that the school board withdrew the original offer and paid what she requested.14
Clara's monetary rewards were matched by increasing satisfaction in her work during these early years. She viewed herself as a serious, professional teacher, and unlike many young men and women, who saw teaching as a temporary station between the end of their own schooling and the beginning of a profession or marriage, she seems to have embraced her work as a long-term career. Accordingly, she invested many hours expanding her own expertise with self-study. In addition, she actively sought advice on method and curriculum from Sally and Stephen, both of whom had been accomplished teachers, and from her father and brother David, who had seen the trials and successes of many schools from the vantage point of school board members.15 She further reinforced and rounded out her own fine instincts in a lengthy correspondence with her former tutor, Lucien Burleigh. He challenged her to treat both individual pupils and even the most routine aspects of the work with respect. “It is a responsible station, and one that demands much thought and meditation,” he cautioned her. To her query about personal bonds formed in the classroom, he replied unequivocally: “If the instructor succeeds in securing the affection of his pupils, he will be able by being judicious to forward them rapidly in their studies.”16
Whether directly heeding this advice or acting on her own strong impulses, Barton excelled in capturing not only the respect but the love of her pupils. She had a ready wit, and an absence of condescension which pleased them, and her sense of fairness destroyed the jealousies of favoritism. “She had such a happy way with her that she won everybody over to her side,” recalled one admirer.17 Poor children received the same care as the others, with a personalized attention that sometimes changed their lives. (One such boy was rescued from the drudgery of factory work to develop his exceptional mathematical skills, a favor he never forgot.18) She was, moreover, unabashedly loyal, even possessive of her pupils. “They were all mine,” she recalled in an autobiographical sketch, “second only to the claims and interests of the real mother…. And so they have remained.”19
Her pupils returned the favor. They fulfilled beyond Clara's wildest expectations her self-expressed need for “approval, encouragement, trust, confidence,” without which she felt her soul might “go awreck.”20 In the shining faces of her students, the boys filled with regard for her fairness and sportsmanship, she felt the acceptance and admiration that had so long eluded her. One pupil liked to think of “the days we spent together at the old no 9 school at Oxford and how proud I was if I could take hold of your dress as you had but too [sic] hands, and walk a little ways with you, how we all loved you then.” For the rest of her life Barton received letters such as this, and the loyalty of her pupils was a continual source of pleasure. “Their life-long loyal allegiance to me is beyond my comprehension,” she wrote at the age of eighty. “Little as many of them were, trifling as the days must have seemed among a whole life of scholarship, which so many of them followed, it is a most remarkable thing that all have remembered those few months and cherished them with a loyalty that the most ambitious teacher could but prize.”21
Self-respect and a sense of place in the community increased Barton's social confidence. As L. N. Fowler had predicted, the experience diminished her chronic introspection; through successful interaction with people she lost some of her shyness, or at least learned to effectively hide it. The social growth was also at least partly due to a conscious effort on her part to face the world with poise, and to please her brother David.
Soon after Clara began teaching, David had become engaged to Julia Ann Porter, the same cousin who had lived with the Barton's during their mutual grandmother's illness. One day David gave his younger sister an invitation that, she later wrote, “took my breath away”: he wished her to join the wedding party by accompanying him to Maine to serve as bridesmaid. Fearful that she would appear awkward or embarrass her brother, she at first demurred but at his insistence was finally persuaded to go. The thought of standing beside the lovely Julia, whose charms could only serve as a contrast to her plain, dumpy figure, and of being called on to graciously introduce cousins and friends, filled her with dread. Yet once it was decided that she would go, she silently determined to act in the most obliging manner possible. Clara cared less what the citizens of Winsor, Maine, thought of her than that she might disappoint her brother and lose his love and support. “I was not distressed about what might be thought of me…,” she reminisced, “but how it might reflect upon my brother, and the mortification that my awkwardness could not fail to inflict on him.” Thus Clara's “tearful resolution” conquered her debilitating shyness. It was yet another turning point during the important years of her teaching career, and she was keenly aware of it at the time. The desire to take responsibility for her actions and to prevail over personal qualities that she herself found unacceptable, she noted, “seemed to throw the whole wide world open to me.”22
For Clara, David Barton's wedding proved to be a memorable experience, not only because of the personal growth she experienced during the time but because it was her earliest adventure away from home. The party traveled up the New England coast by boat, and she felt the thrill of seeing the ocean in its vastness and mystery.23 With wide eyes she encountered “a whole townful of uncles and cousins,” and came to know a place and part of her family that had heretofore been merely characters in stories or names penned on envelopes.24 On the eve of her departure Vester Vassall, her brother-in-law, gave her a Morocco-covered autograph album. At socials and teas she asked her new friends to write a few lines, and they filled the book with their good wishes. Evidently she had conquered not only her own social malaise but the hearts of her relations in Maine. The little green album was carefully preserved with her treasures as a tangible piece of the pride she felt in overcoming her fears.25
As the boundaries of her known world had expanded on the trip, so had her emotional horizons broadened. Barton continued to feel the disadvantage of her homely face and round figure. Yet her quick wit and adventurous and sporting manner were appealing, and several young men in the vicinity of Oxford came to call on her. One swain let her know that whenever he saw her he “made up my face for a really good time,” and another praised both her intelligence and her capacity for laughter.26 Clara's romances remain elusive, however, for they were, to her, intensely private, and she rarely spoke or wrote about them. The few people in whom she confided were rewarded with conflicting or cryptic allusions to gentlemen
