Being thus asked I stated to him briefly my notions, that it would not be wise…to remove good officers…merely because they differed from us in political views.”50 Barton was agitated, yet she tried to make light of it to her family and friends: “there is great talk about cutting off official heads,” she told a nephew, “but no specimens of decapitation yet.”51
That summer the Patent Office was in a frenzy of activity. June 1857 was the busiest month in its history, and Barton put in long hours to keep up with the workload.52 In six days she did two weeks’ work, all in an oppressive heat wave that overwhelmed the city that month. As the summer wore on she tried to keep up with the work, though a severe case of malaria sapped her strength. She took “Bitter bitters” to rid herself of the disease, but her skin turned yellow and her spirits flagged.53, 54 Any hopes she had for keeping her job were finally dashed when Commissioner Mason resigned on August 4, 1857. Without DeWitt or Mason, her two staunch advocates, she had little chance of retaining her already controversial appointment.55 “I begin to feel that my Washington life is drawing to a close,” she wrote home early in September. She had prized the work and welcomed the experience, but her uncomfortable position vis-à-vis the other clerks and the infighting between the secretary and commissioner allowed her to leave in a state of mind more philosophic and relieved than regretful. It “had not been all sunshine,” she concluded, but “a steady battle, hard-fought, and I trust well won.”56 A month later, after being told that her place was wanted, she packed her bags and headed north.57
Barton was free and had a substantial savings account, but she had formulated few ideas about her future, immediate or otherwise. Washington seemed a less attractive place to remain, even temporarily, now that her friends were gone, and a hostile administration virtually foreclosed any possibility of employment. But, as always, she was loath to return home permanently. Giving herself time to think and a much needed rest, Barton boarded a train for Auburn, New York. There she visited the Bertram family, with whom she had stayed years before while a student at the Clinton Liberal Institute.58
Barton was a good house guest, cheerful, helpful, and unobtrusive, and the Bertrams pampered her and urged her to stay for an extended visit. They tried to interest her in settling in the area, possibly to start an academy for young ladies. Barton, however, was in no mood to set up a school or to overstay her welcome. Perhaps remembering her uncomfortable subservience at the Nortons’, she determined not to settle in New York. After a stay of nearly two months, she made a long-promised Christmas visit to her family.
She found that North Oxford was still little changed from her childhood and youth. The same families wielded the same influence. A few new mills had sprung up, but population, enterprise, and interest generally remained stagnant. Her father was growing deaf and saw with difficulty, but he still insisted on setting out his beloved garden and walking miles over the rocky hills to chat with his old comrades. Clara was living in the little house in which she was born, a guest of David and Julie, and that situation, too, was reminiscent of old times. The same climbing rose grew over the door, the same underlying tensions puzzled and disturbed her. Julie's acerbic tongue made her at once witty and disquieting to be around. David she found as charming and erratic as ever, personifying the family trait of overworking himself to the point of nervous exhaustion. Their active, bustling household reflected the varied life of an extended family, but to Clara it seemed to encompass everyone except her, and she felt again that she was the fifth wheel, the sore thumb, the one who did not quite fit.
Only Stephen was missing, his absence keenly felt by Clara. Early in 1856 he had moved to North Carolina to establish a new milling complex. His reputation had never completely recovered from the association with the Learned bank robbery in New York, and this, coupled with a conviction that labor and land were cheaper in the South, and chronic medical problems that made him uncomfortable during the cold New England winters, convinced him to make a move. He sold his share of the S & D Barton Mills to David, recruited twenty excellent workers, uprooted his wife, son Sam, and Bernard Vassall, and settled on the Chowan River in Hertford County. The first year was a lonely and anxious struggle to establish himself as a farmer and businessman. Still, he kept a tight cork on his liberal attitudes, availed himself of the local black labor supply, and determined to succeed. Two years later his business was thriving, but his wise counsel was sorely missed by his youngest sister.59
Clara's visit to North Oxford was meant to be only a short one, but it lengthened to a stay of over two years. During this time she was suspended in a semipermanent limbo. She refused all offers to teach that would commit her to staying in the vicinity. Yet she had no dreams that would precipitate a move. Long a pragmatic dweller in the present, Barton was not given to making elaborate plans. Decisions about the future—a hazy and alien place to her—came with difficulty. She seems to have decided that if she would have to teach she would undertake a position in an academy or as a governess. With a partial eye to this, and with her ever-present zeal for further education egging her on, she embarked on a series of French classes, painting lessons, and other art courses. Languages and art were considered necessary attainments for a well-taught lady and indispensable to the private teacher. In 1858, Clara moved to Worcester, boarded with the family of Judge Barton, and commenced taking classes at a local academy.60
Barton did well in her French courses and earned a little pocket money here and there, chiefly as a companion to an elderly woman friend.61 In addition, she lived off her savings, thus making herself financially independent. Nevertheless, she did not flourish in this, her own most-hated role of subservience and uselessness, and she felt obliged to explain herself and her actions or to conform to the family's standards when in their presence. For all of 1858, she continued her studies, half hoping that something more enticing would come along. Undecided about the future and unhappy with the present, she seemed incapable of acting decisively to relieve her depression.
Determined to make at least a small change, Barton switched from languages to drawing courses in September 1858. Throughout that fall she sketched from nature or models, then graduated to painting and work with ceramics. The few pieces of her artistic work remaining show a detailed and technically competent style, but one that lacks originality or freedom of movement. Though she found her efforts mildly interesting, she did not regard them as work and could not embrace them seriously. Rather, they encouraged her fears that she was not developing but only idly filling time.62
What Barton sorely needed was a sense of purpose. She found a focus in two young relatives, both of whom looked to her for help at this time. She was distracted by their troubles and, more importantly, could bolster her own feelings of self-worth by working out their problems. But ultimately she undertook too much responsibility for these children, and they proved a costly emotional and financial drain. Their success or failure became entangled with her own sense of achievement; their progress dictated her own elation or sorrow.
It was concern for her nephew, Irving Vassall, that most seriously affected Barton's mood. She was closer as a peer to Irving and his brother Bernard than perhaps any other members of the family. To these two she confided her own darkest self-doubts, and with them she was at her most playful. For years she had exchanged poems with Bubby, as she nicknamed Irving, and enjoyed his witty and inquiring mind. In his late teens, he had “grown to be a young man, full of promise, noble and intellectual beyond all reasonable expectations.”63 Now she watched with alarm as his health declined and his vitality sputtered and died. He was, at sixteen, consumptive, and he was beginning to experience the full effects of this debilitating disease. By the time his Aunt Clara moved to North Oxford, his spirits and constitution were precariously low. He and his mother had moved to Washington: they hoped the mild climate would improve his health. In fact it had deteriorated seriously during their first months there. To make matters worse, Vester Vassall, his father, had proven to be an inadequate provider. The Barton family was constantly called on to help, for Irving's own family could afford neither expensive medical care nor a permanent move to a less rigorous climate. Worried that the boy would be allowed to waste away, Barton began to confer with
