Yet Elizabeth was never free from McFarland’s powerful influence. The two were locked in a lifelong dance—wherever Elizabeth campaigned, he was always there, ready to take her in hold again to lead her in steps she did not want to follow. On the cusp of achieving her most ambitious reform—a federal law to protect patients’ postal rights, for which she’d personally lobbied President Grant at the White House—McFarland reportedly made a special trip to Washington to inform the committee members of her insanity.
The bill did not pass.
Elizabeth put up with his personal attacks for years, but in 1878, she made a concerted effort to publish her side of the story. The Mystic Key was intended to be “an efficient aid in my legislative work, by removing the greatest obstacle I have hitherto encountered in the passing of my reform bills, viz, the false interpretation of my ‘love-letter!’”28
It was not the only book she published that year. Though she sold it separately, The Mystic Key had originally been conceived and published as an appendix. An appendix to what she’d always considered her greatest work: The Great Drama.
By 1878, she had finally sold enough books, pamphlets, and copies of her political speeches to raise the capital required to publish the magnum opus she’d written in the asylum. To her credit, she seemingly did not edit or redact it in any way. Her boldness is even more notable because she freely admitted that it was not only want of capital but “want of courage”29 that had made her reluctant to publish it to date. She’d feared that readers might think her too radical, that she ran risk of another commitment. But, she said, “I now fear God’s chastening rod [for not publishing it] more than I do the public criticisms.”30 In the end, she took her own advice: “We must be palsied by no fear to offend, no desire to please, no dependence upon the judgment of others.”31
It was, perhaps, the crowning moment of her writing career. She dedicated the book to “My beloved sisters, the married women of America.”32
And those women recognized her in return. One of Elizabeth’s most prized possessions was an engraved gold pocket watch she was given in 1880 “by the married women of Oregon for securing their emancipation”;33 Elizabeth had successfully passed a bill there that equalized the rights of husbands and wives. It became an “inestimable treasure,”34 not least because her campaigning made for a lonely lifestyle. She did not really have a home; she traveled all over the country instead, battling a male-and doctor-dominated world that did not want her in it. After all she’d been through, the watch was a precious gift. She planned to leave it to her children, “as a significant token of their mother’s life work.”35
As for those children, they scattered across the United States. Most married, some had children, and they pursued various careers, with Samuel undoubtedly the most successful, following in his mother’s footsteps as he’d hoped to. The lawyer was “ever an advocate of reform and progressive measures”36 and learned from Elizabeth to create “so strong a sentiment in favor of [his arguments] that it was found impossible”37 to resist them. Arthur, over whose upbringing Elizabeth had the least influence, was said by the family to be the “least successful”38 sibling: a “mild, unimpressive sort of man.”39
By far the saddest story, however, was what happened to Libby. When Elizabeth was in the asylum, knowing her ten-year-old child had been burdened by a weight of responsibility a full-grown woman could be crushed by, she’d written to her daughter encouragingly, saying, “Joys bright and fragrant lie beyond this dark vale thou art now called to tread… The tide will turn.”40
But that was not what fate had in store for her child.
Libby was “taken deranged,”41 in her father’s words. Intriguingly, the first episode of what would prove a lifelong struggle with her mental health apparently struck on April 30, 1870, almost a year after Elizabeth had reclaimed custody. It is conjecture, but perhaps with her mother finally back in her rightful place within the family, Libby could let go of the tension she’d been holding in for the past ten years. Later generations of her family wholly attributed her mental breakdown to the pressure she’d been placed under as a child, and modern medical science supports that. Studies show that a mother’s presence can directly influence a child’s brain by insulating it from the damaging effects of stress or fear. But children torn from their mothers, like Libby was, and especially for prolonged periods, can suffer such acute stress that the development of their brain is affected, “disrupting a child’s ability to regulate their emotions and cope with future stress.”42