It was an unusually rewarding and happy time for Barton. The unqualified success of her school provided her with the dignity and confidence she had felt so lacking in Hightstown. Remembrances of the tangled and pained romances of the previous spring were ebbing slowly away, and she relished outings with Charlie Norton and a visit from Oliver Williams with a renewed detachment.71 If she missed the thrill of passion her letters do not show it. Fanny Childs also brought an enjoyable companionship to her life. Together they shared rooms in a boarding house run by Peter Jacques and his wife. The Jacques were amiable, Maria Jacques was an excellent cook, and the other boarders, who included Peter Suydam, were equally congenial. Indeed Fanny Childs remembered it chiefly as a time of laughter. Suydam, she noted, “frequently commented on the fact that when Clara and I were in our room together, we were always talking and laughing. It was a constant wonder to him. He could not understand how we found so much to laugh at.”72 By now Barton was something of a heroine in the town and, far from being socially ostracized, found herself a coveted guest. Underscoring Clara's pleasure was the great accomplishment she felt in having escaped the untenable situation in Hightstown by fearlessly moving on without friends or certain job to act as a safety net. She had come to trust her self-reliance, and this had renewed her faith in the world. Boldly she told a friend, “I have learned to think I have as good a right to live as any body and I will in spite of them.”73
Throughout the winter term of 1853, Barton and Childs taught while admiration of their work grew. They were pressed to accept salaries of $250 per year and were greatly encouraged by the now almost universal support for free public education in the city.74 With pride the Bordentown school board informed the state superintendent that “during the past year great advances have been made in…the cause of education…. We have an advance in the character of our teachers, an advance in the attendance of children, an advance in system and order within school, and an advance in the public interest felt in schools.”75 Once convinced of the advantages of public schools, the town had no desire to keep the children not accommodated in the two schools on the streets. As a result, at a public meeting the townspeople enthusiastically approved a plan to raise four thousand dollars to build a new public schoolhouse, large enough to house all six hundred school-age children.76
In March 1853, at the height of this triumph, Barton returned home for a visit. Ever mindful of her students, she required them to write to her as an exercise in letter writing; one pupil remembered with a certain amount of awe that she answered all with a personal note. She was not, however, completely preoccupied by her students. It had been eighteen months since she had been home, and she relished the thought of meeting the “kind friends waiting there.” Now, independent and successful, she could come home without apology to anyone. The pleasures of a triumphal visit were cut short, however, by a serious groin infection, which she recalled years later as one of the most uncomfortable illnesses of her life. Recovery was slow, but by late spring she was again in Bordentown supervising the erection of the enlarged school.77
The handsome new school building of plastered brick was a teacher's dream, with new desks, maps, and equipment of every sort. Two stories high, it contained eight classrooms, with the distinct advantages of graded classes. The rooms gave a great deal of privacy, yet enough proximity to promote healthy competition between teachers. The town looked with pride on the rapid completion of Schoolhouse Number 1, and the opening of the school in the fall of 1853 was the “event of the season.”78
Beneath the freshly plastered facade, however, were cracks of discontent and disappointment, especially for Barton. She was distressed to find several religious groups clamoring for state funds for their sectarian schools. Under New Jersey law, they were entitled to a share of the funds that were distributed locally, but the monies would have to come from those already earmarked for the large public school. Another minor flurry arose over the dissatisfaction of those who had previously taught the private schools. As the free schools gained in reputation, the old subscription schools gradually closed. This was the only form of livelihood open to many of the teachers. Although the school board tried to help place the teachers, some accusations worried Barton and marred her pleasure.79
The gravest blow of all, however, was the discovery that the school was to be headed by an outsider named J. Kirby Burnham. It was Barton's sex, not her skills, to which the town objected. Having been raised in an atmosphere that encouraged her intellectual skills, having conquered rough winter schools that had shaken many a schoolmaster, and having demanded and received pay equal to a man's, she had not expected to meet such prejudice in Bordentown. It shocked her to be classed as a “female assistant” in this school, thereby ranking no higher than the other seven women who taught in the building. Not knowing what to do, she stayed on, helping with examination and classification of the six hundred pupils. But her heart was no longer in the work. She believed Burnham to be ungrateful and highhanded and resented deeply the necessity of taking orders from him. He created strict rules for governing the children, of which Barton did not approve. Burnham may indeed have possessed dictatorial qualities, or perhaps he was merely trying to establish himself in what must have been an extremely uncomfortable working relationship. In any case, Barton grew increasingly resentful of his presence, complaining vehemently that she needed “no one to give me directions and tell me what I shall and shall not do.”80 She may also have resented the lower salary she received, for Burnham was making $600 to her $250. Her brother tried to console her: “Those that do the hardest work generally get the least pay.”81
Barton was not the only teacher who was put off by Burnham. The teachers were split in their loyalties, and the resulting disunity hampered the school's progress during the first year. Fanny Childs followed Barton's lead in deploring the unfortunate Burnham, as did another teacher, Ellen Bartine. Together these three nicknamed him “the Critter” and spent much time poking fun at his mannerisms and occupations. But another teacher, a Miss Stinton, had formed a romantic attachment to Burnham, and she rallied the other teachers to his defense.82 Hostility among the staff rubbed off on the children. “I don’t see why Miss Barton could not have taught in our room,” one student complained when assigned to another teacher's class.83 A scathing editorial in the Bordentown Register condemned the teachers for their squabblings and unprofessional attitude. The school, it noted, had “stringent rules and regulations made to govern innocent and unoffending children, but none for those who needed them the most viz: the teachers.” The common knowledge of their quarrels was dividing the town, the paper continued, and had “completely disunited our school, destroyed its usefulness and intrinsic worth, bred war and contention in our midst, and instead of yielding the long sought blessing, is crushing us with the iron power of a despotism and covering us with the mantle of confusion and shame.”84
Under the pressure of rivalry, unhappiness, and the bitter collapse of her hopes, Clara's health broke down. She became weak and faint, and her spirited voice first hushed to a whisper, then gave out altogether. Although she blamed it on the damp new building, lime dust, and the strain of constant speaking during the five days of pupil examinations, she would experience these symptoms again and again during her lifetime in situations in which there was no lime dust or plaster, only tension, or disappointment and overwork. She tried to remain at her post, “but it was a vain effort.” Finally, seeing that there would be no change in her status in the new school and needing desperately to escape the stressful situation, she and Fanny Childs resigned. The town protested, hoping she would stay and appear occasionally at the school to lend it her prestige and a sense of continuity, but “the strain was too great.” In February 1854 she left Bordentown, her heart broken, her future again uncertain.85
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