In one of her letters Mrs. Baker spoke of missing her daughter’s “prattle,” and what she meant is made clear by the bits and pieces of news and comment scattered through Mary’s letters to her brother George:
You have perhaps heard Esqr. Pierce is elected senator to congress. . . . We attended a party of young Ladies at Miss Hayes last evening she was truly sorry our Brother from Conn. was not there, but she is soon to be married and then the dilemma will close as it is your fortune to have some opposeing obstacle to extricate you. Oh brother I wish I could see you, and I hdly think Abby and I would be as sleepy as we wer the last night you spent with us; but could amuse ourselvs (if not you) by telling you things that would excite laughter if nothing more. . . . I will give you an abridged sketch of a gentleman recently from Boston, now reading medicine with a doctor of this town, a perfect complet gentleman I met him a number of times at parties last winter he inviteed me to go to the shakers with him but my superiors thought it would be a profanation of the sabbathe; and I accordingly did not go. . . . Father has been speculating of late, although it is an allusion that in a letter might be considered rather abrupt, to tell you he has swaped your favourite horse with Mr. Rogers.32
The ability to rattle on in this cheerful manner made Mary a lively companion as well as correspondent. Inevitably she began to attract suitors, but for the time being she was not interested. A letter wrongly attributed to her by several biographers states blandly, “As to my being married, I don’t begin to think much of that ‘decisive step.’ ”33 The words were not hers; the sentiment was.
The nineteenth century put great value on a languishing sentimentality in women, but in Mary’s case the tendency was modified not only by her natural enthusiasm but by a certain flavor of wit, sometimes a little quaint but not without pungency. This was to grow with the years, and a psychiatrist who examined her seventy years later in connection ● ● ●
32 Abigail Ambrose Baker to Mary Baker Glover, 6 February 1844, 1919.001.0027, LMC; Mary Baker to George Sullivan Baker, 20 December 1836, 1919.001.0006, LMC; Mary Baker to George Sullivan Baker, 17 April 1837, 1919.001.0015, LMC.
33 Mary Bean to Augusta Holmes Swasey, 6 January 1839, L02679, MBEL. This is one of the three letters mentioned in p. 68, note 68.