The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [25]
Constance and Thecla refused. “We cannot listen to such a plan; it would never do; we are going to nurse day and night; we must be at our post.”
Both sisters had survived the previous yellow fever epidemic in 1873. No sooner had they arrived in Memphis to open a boarding and day school for girls than the epidemic began. Women trained to be teachers found themselves to be nurses, cooks, care-takers. One sister at St. Mary’s would later write: “That epidemic of 1873 seems now like a faint foreshadowing of the one through which we have just passed. The distressing scenes witnessed in the first were replaced by overwhelming sorrows in the second, while the pain and sadness of the one were intensified into most bitter suffering and anguish in the other.”
When a scourge of this magnitude strikes, the minds of people, against all rational thought, look for a reason. Modern-day epidemic psychologists have described a total collapse of conventional order—fear pervades, the sick go uncared for, people are persecuted and moral controversies arise. Memphians became almost medieval in their divine conclusions. Protestants and Catholics fought over who deserted and who stayed to look after their flocks. It was suggested by some in the North that an all-wise Providence created the plague to bring a divided nation together. Clergy warned that New Orleans and Memphis suffered yellow fever because of their heathen Mardi Gras celebrations. The fever, it was reported, “was fatal to those whose energies had been exhausted by debauchery.” It made it harder to explain the many who perished from selfless sacrifice. “The nuns died,” as one newspaper column read, “in numbers sufficient to give rise to the belief that they were specially marked by the destroyer.”
Constance served as sister superior at St. Mary’s. Caroline Louise Darling, as she was named at birth, was accomplished for the time period: educated, talented, well mannered, a good leader to the band of women at St. Mary’s. She was described as “a woman of exquisite grace, tenderness, and loveliness of character, very highly educated, and one who might have adorned the most brilliant social circle.” Constance looked young for her thirty-two years with a round face and blue eyes beneath the heavy black habit, an iron cross around her neck.
When Constance arrived at St. Mary’s that August day, she went immediately to meet with the dean, Reverend George C. Harris. The greatest task facing them was caring for the dozens of children orphaned daily, but their help was also needed in the streets. The virulence of this particular yellow fever epidemic was without question, but neglect of the ill proved to be almost as deadly. Nurses were scarce. Many patients, who might have recovered, died simply from starvation and dehydration.
Dean Harris outlined their immediate needs: to feed the hungry, to provide for the barest necessities of the sick, to minister to the dying, to bury the dead and to take care of the orphaned children.
Each day, the sisters alternated caring for the orphans at St. Mary’s, delivering children to the Canfield Asylum and taking soup and medicine on house calls. They met in the mornings with Dean Harris to receive their orders, then set out into the infected district with linen squares soaked in disinfectant hidden beneath their clothes. Every evening they met for Communion and Vespers, and at Harris’s request, they relaxed without talk of the fever.
Constance must have set out her first day with a sense of purpose and strength. Stepping into the heat and stench of Poplar Street, it would not take long to realize the overwhelming magnitude of this scourge. The sun, dust and black smoke of fever fires coiled around her in a dizzying haze. Where to begin? Which neighborhoods, which streets, which houses? There were too many to count. Victims fell dead in the parks, under fences or alone in their homes,