“I have seen nothing that could make me think her insane,”20 Labrie later commented, in a sentiment seemingly shared by all—except for her husband’s friends. They still maintained that she was mad, partly because Elizabeth bluntly ignored them. She’d determined to withdraw friendship from anyone who’d ever called her insane, “until they had made suitable satisfaction to me for the wrongs they had done.”21 Why grant the time of day to those who’d colluded in her committal?
But they saw only the unnatural sight of a woman holding a grudge.
Elizabeth spent most of her time, when not at home, visiting the Hasletts and the Blessings. Sometimes they met at the Blessings’ hotel; at others they went to nearby Kankakee. Theophilus, keeping tabs on his wife, noted these meetings in his diary, complaining that these “mischievous intermeddlers, male and female”22 made a habit of “meeting her secretly with locked doors.”23
And those friends were outraged by his behavior. They felt Elizabeth deserved to be allowed to mother her children as she wished. She deserved for them to respect her. She certainly deserved access to her own wardrobe so she could once again assume the place in society she’d long ago lost. Clothing mattered, and Theophilus’s continued confiscation of his wife’s best outfits was deliberate. Elizabeth’s friends were so disturbed by his actions that they appointed a committee to protect her.
Come October 30, 1863, it decided to take preemptive action before things got any worse.
Theophilus saw them coming to the house. “A Manteno mob assembled,”24 he recorded crossly, though his description appears hyperbolic, as he clarified it was actually only “a couple of men.”25 These were probably Mr. Haslett and Mr. Blessing, whom he described as “the chief instigators in all these scenes of mischief.”26
Theophilus was lucky that day: he was not home alone. His brother-in-law Hervey Severance, married to his sister Marian, was visiting from Massachusetts, and his sister Sybil Dole was present too, along with Libby and Samuel. All watched as the men came into their home and began to question Theophilus about the way he’d been treating his wife.
“O what scenes were these!”27 the pastor lamented in his diary, outraged that these outsiders had come “to regulate my family affairs.”28 “I cannot here describe them,”29 he added tightly, words failing him, aghast at his neighbors’ audacity.
But to his surprise, help came in his hour of need from a most unexpected source: Elizabeth. She, too, was in the room when her friends came to help her. And when they questioned her husband, it was Elizabeth who interjected.
She said she had received “good treatment,”30 thank you very much. She said she “had a great deal of attention paid to her,”31 though she was seemingly unaware of just how close Theophilus’s surveillance really was.
She had still not finished. Taking a deep breath, she said she “did not wish the committee to examine into their family affairs.”32
She refused the help of her would-be rescuers.
Her speech made, Elizabeth Packard “left the room, the committee, and the house.”33
Theophilus merely nodded in satisfaction as he sent the intermeddlers away: his home, his wife, his way.
At long last, it seemed even Elizabeth was starting to accept that.
CHAPTER 39
If it wasn’t for the intermeddlers, Theophilus Packard thought in November 1863, he could have considered himself quite satisfied. Elizabeth’s return did not appear to have torn the children from him as he may have feared. All were still toeing his line, with Libby, in particular, a “great comfort”1 to him; he seemed to rely on her a lot emotionally.
Perhaps the most pleasant surprise had been Elizabeth’s own behavior. She’d excused herself from family prayers, so there was no conflict there, and in truth she barely spoke to him. Even if her silence came from resentment, he did not much care. Really, the maddest thing she did these days was to keep asking for those Bible class essays she’d written in the spring of 1860. He’d commandeered them long ago but refused to return them. What she might want with them, he could not imagine.
But those intermeddlers… They refused to give up. To his dismay, they were persistently “prejudicing and influencing the public mind”2 against him, refusing to let the matter of Elizabeth’s treatment drop.
Yet there was a development in mid-November that meant he suddenly had to treat Elizabeth very differently indeed. A set of keys went missing. Theophilus was immediately suspicious that Elizabeth had stolen them. The sense of security he’d been lulled into vanished in a flash.