Elizabeth’s second son, Isaac Packard, as a young man
Theophilus was angry at the army she had raised. He invited a handful of her soldiers to his “trial” on June 16, hoping to convince them. But when a doctor among them refused to cast his vote—his reasonable justification being that he’d made no professional examination of Elizabeth and could hardly diagnose her based on hearsay—Theophilus, bitter, dismissed him as a “quack.”27
Isaac Packard had attended the trial. Inevitable though it had been, he’d been devastated by the verdict of insanity. It made him even more determined to assist his mother.
Determination that saw him standing ready on the morning on June 18—and standing outside his mother’s door.
It was his tread Elizabeth had heard. She summoned her dark-haired son to her bedside, feeling the wolves’ hot breath, desperate now to concoct some plan that might prevent her husband’s perfidy.
She told Isaac to fetch his sister home at once. Libby was sleeping overnight at the Rumseys and Elizabeth felt suspicious of her absence, coinciding as it did with baby Arthur having gone to stay with Sybil Dole. Was it all part of Theophilus’s plot?
Isaac promised he would fetch his sister. But he explained with a young man’s grown-up pride that he had another, more pressing responsibility to attend to first. He’d been given special instructions by his boss that morning: “I must first go of an errand on to the prairie for Mr. Comstock.”28 He vowed that as soon as he was done, they would go together to collect Libby and Arthur.
The plan confirmed, Elizabeth relaxed. She knew Mr. Comstock was “too noble to cheat you out of a single farthing.”29 In fact, when her husband had first threatened the asylum, it had been Comstock she’d consulted for advice, for in addition to running the local store, the twenty-eight-year-old was a lawyer. Elizabeth had called on him with a sad heart, regretting such a visit should be necessary. Yet Comstock’s “gentle respectful attentions”30 soon put her at her ease until she felt she “could look up and speak without my voice trembling.”31 She’d wanted to know: Was it legally possible for her husband to commit her, given she was not mad?
Most states then had no limits on relatives’ “right of disposal”32 to commit their loved ones. As one commentator wrote of the lack of legal protections for patients: “The insane were confined for their own good. It followed that there could be no motive for misdiagnosis, mistreatment, or unjust detention…there was no need to protect him from his protectors.”33 But Comstock had good news. In Illinois, an insanity trial before a six-man jury was required before admittance to the state hospital. Theophilus’s plan was impossible; Elizabeth had nothing to fear.
The information had, for a time, given her a feeling of comparative security. Mentally, she’d begun preparations for a trial. She’d felt her Bible class essays were her “only available means of self-defence,”34 because she believed they provided evidence her views were sane. Once the church members’ feelings about her had become clear, she’d made a point of putting “into written form all I have to say, in the class, to prevent misrepresentation.”35 Words had become her defense, her armor, and the Bible class a chrysalis through which Elizabeth found her voice.
It had been a long time coming. After she’d married, Elizabeth had had to leave behind the “thorough, scientific education”36 she’d received as a girl and the teaching career that had followed. Over the years, she had longed—in vain—for a tithe of the time her husband had for study. He’d spent their decades together sketching out sermons, but her thoughts had always evaporated into nothing, like the steam above the saucepans on her stove.
The Bible class had changed all that. Her attendance had coincided almost exactly with her weaning baby Arthur from the breast; it was a chance to use her brain over body after decades of childrearing. Simply to leave her domestic realm had been enervating; her mind had opened like the door through which she walked. But the opportunity to write essays was even more transformative. Line by line, Elizabeth had begun to see herself take shape on the page.
With the essays so significant, in so many ways, she’d already taken care to conceal them in her room. Now, with the noose drawing tighter about her neck, she felt it safest to keep them on her person. She had therefore started sewing a pocket in her underskirt, knowing the ample girth of a cage crinoline would create the perfect hiding place.
But it was not finished yet. As she and Isaac discussed their plans that morning, she made a mental note to complete that pocket as soon as she possibly could.