The only thing that unsettled her was that McFarland himself would not be present; he’d been called away to testify in a murder trial on behalf of the accused. Their parting had been, to her mind, surprisingly brief. After imparting the news of her husband’s imminent arrival, “He then shook hands with me, and bade me ‘good bye,’ as if he did not expect to meet me again!”2
Yet Elizabeth was assured that her impression of a final parting must have been wrong. She was certain she would still be at the asylum when McFarland returned. She was a boarder in her own rented room, after all. She would leave when her book was ready, not before.
Yet on June 17, two porters had entered her room to pack her trunk. Though she’d told them assertively they had no right to touch her things, to her shock, she was threatened with a screen room if she got in their way. She had no other protest she could make. Clothes, looking glasses, books, and Bible were all removed against her will, with her packed trunk then deposited in the matron’s room for safekeeping.
So when, on the morning of June 18, her attendant ordered her to dress for a journey, Elizabeth informed her briskly that if she wanted her to wear such clothes, she would have to bring them to her: there was nothing left in her room now but what she stood up in. She added that while she might consent to dress in such articles as the girl thought suitable, “As to accompanying the said gentleman to the cars, I shall never consent to do this.”3
The whole hospital was in a “tremor of excitement”4 about her possible departure. The night before, Sophia Olsen and her fellow Eighth Ward patients had been informed that Elizabeth would be leaving the following morning.
“No flash of lightning then came gleaming into our window,” Sophia wrote, “no clap of thunder broke our meditations; nor did an earthquake rock the ground our house was built upon; yet if all these phenomena had really happened, I hardly think the excitement could have been greater. The raving actually forgot to rave; the swearers were held in dumb suspense; even the scarred victims of despair looked up from their blood-shot eyes! The exclamations, discussions, questions that for several hours took precedence of every other commotion, I cannot describe.”5
But now, on the morning of June 18, in Elizabeth’s private room, there was only quiet. Only silence. She sat patiently awaiting whatever came next: her traveling dress upon her body, her shawl around her shoulders, her gloves pulled onto her fingers in readiness for a journey she did not want to take. She sat in her chair, idly reading, as all her writing papers had been confiscated the day before.
She had pulled her bedstead across her door. This was a habit, as there was no lock on the inside but this improvised variety. Elizabeth liked the feeling of privacy it gave, albeit illusory. She did not think of it as a barricade, because it took her only a moment to move it whenever a knock came upon her door.
But that morning, they did not knock.
Instead, without warning, the bedstead suddenly shunted backward. Dr. Tenny and two other men burst into her bedroom. Elizabeth felt almost frightened as the furniture moved violently across the floor, stopping only inches from her feet. As she looked up, aghast at the intrusion, she saw three stout men standing at her door, their breaths already heavy with effort.
“Mrs. Packard,” Dr. Tenny said, “your husband is in the office waiting to take you to the cars in the [omni]bus which is now waiting at the door. We wish you to go with us for that purpose.”6
Elizabeth felt her spirits sink. She’d argued with Tenny in the days beforehand, calmly making out her case for staying at the asylum, but it seemed her arguments had fallen “like water spilt upon the ground.”7 It had, perhaps, only ever been a distant hope that Tenny might defend her in McFarland’s place, but to find herself friendless was still a bitter blow. Nevertheless, she raised her head high.
“Dr. Tenny,” Elizabeth said evenly, “I shall not go with you for that purpose. And here in the presence of these witnesses, I claim a right to my own identity, and in the name of the laws of my country, I claim protection against this assault upon my personal rights. I claim a right to myself.”8
But her words were moonbeams disregarded in the light of day. Later, McFarland, her husband, and the trustees would all cite her refusal to leave the hospital as evidence of madness. But given what Theophilus had planned, was it any wonder she did?
In response to her defiant words, Tenny merely issued orders: “Take Mrs. Packard up in your arms and carry her to the ’bus.”9
Elizabeth kept her body stiff, exactly as she had three years earlier, her paralysis the only power she had left. The men surrounded her, made a saddle seat upon which she was soon lifted.