1880
Nine years later, Maud Gage stood on the platform of the train depot in Fayetteville as the steam engine pulled in, black, belching, and majestic, drowning out her words, sweeping up her skirts in a gust, and blowing wisps of hair into her mouth. Maud’s hair was rolled and pinned up in the latest style, and she wore an elegant blue traveling dress. Now nineteen, she had long since folded away her hand-me-down boy’s clothes. Her father stood on one side of her, her mother on the other. In the din of the approaching train, Maud could see her mother’s mouth moving but was unable to hear her words. For the first time in Maud’s life, the giant iron horse, the rattling clacking sounds of the rails, the deep hoot of the whistle, even the blue sky itself seemed to work together in concert to diminish her mother. Maud was leaving home to attend Cornell University, and Mother was staying behind.
Papa escorted his daughter onto the train and ushered her into a seat next to the window before settling into the one beside her.
“Big day!” he said gruffly, reaching out to envelop Maud’s hand in his.
Maud felt an unexpected tug of sadness. She had already sensed how much her father was going to miss her, but these last few days she’d hardly given him a thought, packing and repacking her trunk, counting the hours and minutes until her departure. She blinked resolutely, determined not to let her feelings show. Papa continued chatting in his mild manner—making comments about the passing scenery, the fine weather, and naming merchants he did business with in the towns they passed through. But Maud was too excited to listen, answering her father’s conversational gambits with monosyllables until, at last, he nodded off to sleep. Left uninterrupted, her thoughts clattered in her head like their passenger car over the tracks. She stared out the window, noting the station platforms—Homer and Cortland, Freeville and Etna—marking off a path that took her farther from home. With each passing depot, more weight lifted off her shoulders. By the time the train arrived in Ithaca, she felt so light she could float upon the air. She stepped out onto the platform certain that she was going to love her new life.
The buildings of Cornell University crested a high hill. At the college’s center rose the brick-fronted form of Cornell’s new women’s dormitory, Sage College, its central tower jutting like an accusing finger into the sky. Maud could imagine Mother pointing at the colossal edifice and saying, “Women are equal, and here is the proof.” But not everyone was as convinced of this as Matilda Joslyn Gage. In spite of the beautiful new building dedicated to women’s education, the young coeds were not fully equal, not yet.
Eager to start her new life, Maud had tried not to dwell on her mother and brother T.C.’s discussions about the storms of controversy that had ensued in the male student body over the admittance of young women––the furious debates in the school’s newspaper and around the dining tables in the refectory, the young men, soon to be her classmates, who had spoken out vociferously against the new policy, the faculty members who had argued that women would bring down the standing of the fledging Cornell. Maud’s mother had fought hard for women to win the right to earn a diploma—something that Matilda herself had been denied. Maud’s older sister, Julia, had borne the agony of her mother’s dashed expectations, enrolling at Syracuse only to return home, unable to keep up due to her sick headaches and nerves. Maud understood that she had been anointed—she was not to let her mother down.
* * *
—
PAPA COULD NOT STAY LONG—the last train out of Ithaca gave him little time to linger—and so once he had seen to it that her trunk was delivered safely into her new room, they said their goodbyes. Maud clung to Papa for a final moment, burying her face in his wool coat, breathing in the scent of him, his cigar smoke and his soap. After a moment, she let go, but he held her at arm’s length a bit longer. “Don’t let anybody steal your marbles,” he said, his voice cracking, then let go and turned away, although not fast enough for Maud to miss the tears glistening in his eyes.
Through the window she saw him retreating back into the carriage and tipping his hat before disappearing from sight. Maud realized that she was alone, for the first time in her life.
But she had not been alone for a quarter of an hour when she heard a gentle rap on the door of her new room. She opened it to find a smiling young woman whose aureole of red-gold curls was lit up by the sun streaming in the window.
“Oh, you’re here! How delightful!” the girl said, walking into the room without stopping to ask her leave. “You must be Miss Gage? How do you do? I’m your roommate, Josie Baum.”
Miss Baum had a freckled complexion and eyes that looked like bright blue buttons in her face. Their room, which was situated along a long corridor on the third floor, faced the quadrangle, and the window afforded a pleasant vista of its green expanse. Her new roommate, a sophomore, knew all about life in Sage, and Maud took the opportunity to ask her many questions.
“Let me take you on a tour,” Josie offered. “You need to be able to find your way around.”
Sage College, christened just five years earlier, in 1875, had been constructed with no expense spared; it was a three-story building with three large wings, and everything the coeds could have needed or wanted was provided for them. There were modern water closets on every floor, and bathrooms where hot water came straight from the taps. Josie toured Maud around its vast expanses, the corridors and stairways, the drawing rooms with the silk striped wallpaper, elegant wicker upholstered armchairs, and thick Oriental rugs. Each common room was equipped with its own grand piano. There was a gymnasium for healthful exercise, an indoor swimming pool, and an infirmary for when they were sick, a library, countless classrooms, and, of course, a large dining room that served three hot meals a day. All that was missing were girls. The cavernous building was mostly empty, its long hallways flanked by empty rooms. Mr. Sage had designed the college to be large enough to house more than two hundred young women, but fewer than thirty brave souls had enrolled as coeds. Maud’s own class consisted of only nineteen women among a class of more than two hundred gentlemen.
Maud spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking her trunk, while Josie sat on her bed. Each dress Maud unfolded required a full inspection from her new friend, who was enthusiastic about all things dress-related. This was a surprise to Maud. Mother, though particular in her own toilette, thought discussion of dresses and ribbons and lace frivolous. Besides, she seemed to assume that Maud was the same girl who had been happy wearing boy’s clothes, when, in fact, she’d developed quite a liking for pretty frocks.
“Oh, you must wear this one to dinner tonight!” Josie said when Maud pulled a pale yellow dress from her trunk and smoothed out its wrinkles.
“Do you like it?” Maud asked. “I just picked it up from the dressmaker. It’s brand-new.”
“It’s lovely,” she said. “And you simply must make a good first impression. The young men join us for dinner. First night, you know, everyone will be looking at the new hens.”
“Hens?”
“Oh, that’s what they call us,” Josie said, as if it didn’t bother her at all. “You’ll get used to the way we talk here, soon enough.”
* * *
—
THE TWO WOMEN DESCENDED the broad staircase of Sage College arm in arm. In the dining room, large tables laid with crystal and silver glowed in the soft light of the gas lamps. Clusters of young men were gathered on the sofas and at the small tables, and a group had gathered around the piano, where someone was playing “When ’Tis Moonlight.” Maud couldn’t help but focus on a tall young man with hair the color of late autumn straw standing near the piano. His solid tenor floated above the other voices; he turned to watch Josie and Maud enter.
“That’s Teddy Swain,” Josie said. “He’s an upperclassman.”