{"id":3553,"date":"2021-07-01T15:10:04","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T15:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=3553"},"modified":"2021-09-30T18:35:49","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T18:35:49","slug":"the-shape-of-a-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/01\/the-shape-of-a-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shape of a Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Shape of a Life<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Reading the letters of two soldiers\u2014one who fought in the Civil War and the other in World War II\u2014reveals truths not just about the realities of war, but also about what matters most.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Sara Holston
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When I started my yearlong fellowship in Rauner Special Collections\u2014the archives and rare books library at Dartmouth College\u2014I didn\u2019t expect to find new friends in people who had died decades, or even centuries, before I was born. As a Dartmouth student I had become interested in the history of the college, and working in the archives seemed like a great way to explore it further while pondering that age-old question: what was I going to do with my life? But where I hoped to meet signs pointing towards a vocation, I instead met ordinary people muddling their way through some of the most important historical moments of the last couple of centuries.<\/p>

My first project consisted of three boxes of letters in need of organization and updated cataloguing. While that may sound boring on the surface, when I dove into the correspondence, I found it recounted the star-crossed romance of a Union foot soldier, Ransom F. Sargent, and his wife, Maria, waiting at home in New Hampshire. Over the course of his three-year service, they wrote each other nearly every day, and though the missives are primarily love letters, they also offer a ground-level window into historical events I had otherwise only encountered in textbooks.<\/p>

My final project had me sifting through the collection associated with Charles \u201cStubbie\u201d Pearson of the Class of 1942 to tell a story about life at Dartmouth in the 1940s. Stubbie was Dartmouth\u2019s Golden Boy, universally beloved by all who met him\u2014and many who only followed his success in sports. As a student he passionately led his classmates to do their part for the war effort, and after graduating many of them followed him into the Navy. Already a prolific letter writer at school, during the war he wrote to various correspondents at home about life as a soldier, his hopes for the future, and his ideas about the world; the ones I had at Rauner are with Dartmouth\u2019s President Hopkins, Stubbie\u2019s hometown (via their local paper), and the dean\u2019s daughter\u2014a little girl named Sally Neidlinger, with whom Stubbie had become friends.<\/p>

But though the Sargents\u2019 letters are part of a single, contained communication between the two, and Stubbie\u2019s are only fragments of exchanges with many different people, both sets of correspondences capture the experiences of soldiers and their loved ones. And in both I encountered people whose lives had a huge impact on mine, even though we\u2019ll never meet. Their letters captured their thoughts and feelings, letting me come to know them on an intimate level and changing my understanding of the times and events through which they lived.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I\u2019ll admit that at first I gave in to the cynical expectation that this flowery romance was just the honeymoon phase, and eventually the effusive language would fade, or the letters become less frequent.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Over the course of Ransom Sargent\u2019s years as the Fife Major for the 11th<\/sup> New Hampshire Regiment, he and Maria wrote endlessly of missing each other, of their repeatedly dashed hopes for a visit home, and of their day-to-day lives while separated. The letters begin only a few days after their parting (a scant three weeks after their wedding), and Ransom already longs to be home, writing: \u201cIt is only a week since I saw you last at Concord, but it seems a month to me. If I could have one kiss from your lips instead of kissing your picture, I could put up with all the hardships of a soldier\u2019s life without a murmur. But it is hard to get along without you\u2026\u201d<\/p>

I\u2019ll admit that at first I gave in to the cynical expectation that this flowery romance was just the honeymoon phase, and eventually the effusive language would fade, or the letters become less frequent. But as I read on, Ransom\u2019s passion never wavered, and more and more I found myself rooting for the two to be happily reunited, even as I devoured every story Ransom told about the Civil War as seen through the eyes of an ordinary foot soldier.<\/p>

And Ransom\u2019s anecdotes provided a texture to the Civil War I had never imagined. He gives firsthand perspective of some landmark events that were named\u2014but rarely described\u2014in my textbooks, and he seems indifferent to others that I encountered in class as world-shaking moments. No textbook ever gave me a chill the way Ransom\u2019s letter to Maria did, explaining that he was writing her as he sat on a hill watching the Union shell Fredericksburg. Nor could they evoke the haunting quality of his descriptions of walking through the decimated city afterwards, en route to another battle. Ransom\u2019s claim that his regiment has lost more men than the whole south is worth carries the poignant reminder that, since units were organized geographically, those men are his friends and neighbors. I even came to feel attached to some of the other soldiers as Ransom updated Maria on them while she replied with news of their families. In Ransom\u2019s letters, the Battle of Fredericksburg changes from a name on a list of battles to a harrowing tragedy for all involved.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Conversely, when Maria expresses curiosity about the soldiers\u2019 reaction to Lincoln\u2019s election\u2014and later of his assassination\u2014Ransom replies that it doesn\u2019t much matter who sits in the oval office, since it likely won\u2019t change life in the army camps. What I think of as one of those household-name moments when history was made mattered very little to the daily life of Ransom and his fellow soldiers.<\/p>

This description of the day-to-day of a Union foot soldier stands in stark contrast to my idea of them as marching stiffly in formation, and always adhering to a strict code of conduct. Ransom\u2019s letters paint a different picture, in which he and his fellow soldiers come to life as regular men, grumbling about the cold and bad food as they trade gossip around the campfire. Ransom even tells stories about breaking rules, like wandering away from the line with a buddy to spend a few nights in a real bed in an abandoned house, before catching up with his regiment a few days later. He trades complaints about camp conditions and the weather with Confederate soldiers camped just across the river (they had, apparently, underestimated the cold in the north and were very put out not to have tents).<\/p>

But though his letters read almost like a diary\u2014since he writes Maria every few days, he often sends several notes before receiving her response to any given one\u2014it\u2019s clear that Ransom is careful about what he shares with his wife. In one anecdote, he stumbles accidentally into a campsite of Confederate soldiers and, in a moment of panic, takes off running. He notes that, in hindsight, this was a mistake, as they immediately started shooting. Some of the bullets fly so close that he feels the wind of them, and the force of one shell exploding nearby briefly knocks him flat. Though he escapes, he admits to agonizing over whether he should tell Maria and confesses he only does so because he suspects she\u2019ll hear of it anyway when someone else writes home about the incident. Maria reassures him that no story he tells her could be worse than what she imagines, and wryly acknowledges that she suspects Ransom hasn\u2019t even told her all of this one.<\/p>

Meanwhile, though both Sargents lament that the other\u2019s letters are far more interesting, I was genuinely surprised to find that Maria\u2019s life on the home front was nearly as exciting as Ransom\u2019s misadventures at war. In one note, she writes about the tragic loss of a neighbor\u2019s barn in a fire, nearly costing the life of the elderly matron of the farm\u2014the mother of one of Ransom\u2019s fellow soldiers. I didn\u2019t think much of it, at first; the incident seemed like an unfortunate, but not unusual, occurrence in rural 19th<\/sup>-century New Hampshire. In a subsequent missive, however, Maria reports that the New Londoners are starting to suspect arson. Having expected mostly farm updates and concern for Ransom, I could barely believe it when I read those words. I was even more surprised when, a few letters later, Maria reveals the whole sordid affair: the fire was set by the jealous wife of an unfaithful soldier who burned down her husband\u2019s family\u2019s barn in revenge. Suddenly, life on the home front sounded more complicated than sitting around waiting and worrying.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Stubbie\u2019s words reveal him to be incredibly kind and generous with the people around him\u2014even those others might not think worth his time.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A naval pilot in World War II, Stubbie Pearson wrote to numerous correspondents, and his letters provide intimate insight into his thoughts on the world and his dreams for the future. Usually a passionate advocate for the war effort, Stubbie, like Ransom, addresses the mundanity of a soldier\u2019s life in one letter to his hometown. Headlined, \u201cWar Just Another Job as Glamor Wears Off,\u201d it opens: \u201cDear Folks: The glamor, the glitter, the enthusiasm, and the vociferous clamor of the service and the war had disappeared.\u201d He claims that \u201cThe spectacular sensationalism of the feature war stories seems ridiculous,\u201d instead describing the experience as<\/p>

like the small grocer who opens his store each morning, works in it, closes it and goes to live or exist with his family. The men who fight and plan are storekeepers doing their jobs the best way they know how\u2026 It is all such a remarkably simple, struggling, honest, ordinary procedure that I find myself bewildered with the realization of it.<\/em><\/p>

Rather than contradicting his previous passion, this missive reveals that Stubbie isn\u2019t actually enraptured by the glory of battle; he\u2019s just dedicated to doing his part.<\/p>

All of Stubbie\u2019s letters reflect this strength of character, even those exchanged with Sally Neidlinger, daughter of Dartmouth\u2019s Dean Neidlinger. The two first become pen pals while he was still a student, and she was young enough to be doodling cartoons in her congratulatory message on a recent basketball victory. But though it could be argued that Dartmouth\u2019s star student had other priorities than humoring a little girl, he wrote her back earnestly and consistently, and by the time Stubbie joined the Navy, they had developed enough of a rapport that she\u2019s opening up to him about being nervous for her first formal dance. Stubbie encourages her like a big brother, writing: \u201cDon\u2019t be silly Sal\u2014you\u2019ll knock \u2018em dead\u2014just the way you\u2019ve always done and always will. You\u2019ll be queen of the ball and a hundred silly little boys\u2014we\u2019ll call them knights\u2014will be at your feet.\u201d He closes by imagining his return, saying:<\/p>

Perhaps in five or six years I\u2019ll call back to Hanover for a visit and you\u2019ll be as I have said\u2014the lovely Neidlinger girl\u2014you\u2019ll come to say hello and perhaps bring your [boyfriend] along to meet me. I\u2019ll tease you and you\u2019ll blush and then I\u2019ll invite you both to dinner. Don\u2019t you see\u2014you have a delightful life ahead of you and don\u2019t worry about that first dance. It\u2019s the beginning of more fun than you can imagine.<\/em><\/p>

Even without saying anything about himself here, Stubbie\u2019s words reveal him to be incredibly kind and generous with the people around him\u2014even those others might not think worth his time.<\/p>

It\u2019s in his letters to Bill Cummings, a sportswriter he had become acquainted with during his years as a varsity athlete, that Stubbie shares his own thoughts. This exchange also began during Stubbie\u2019s college years, when he contacted Cummings, citing how much they had in common at Dartmouth, and admitted: \u201cThere are so many things I want to ask. Right or wrong, I want to talk about them with somebody\u2026 I\u2019d like to write when I feel like it\u2026\u201d And write he did.<\/p>

In one letter, after describing his hopes of settling down with a home and a family, he admits to being a little embarrassed when he first caught himself imagining it, but: \u201cThen I was almost militantly proud, because I seemed suddenly to see that dreams and love and beauty are nothing to be ashamed of.\u201d He is particularly honest with Cummings about the war; he writes at length about what he\u2019s fighting for, that<\/p>

Man is Man wherever he is on the planet and whatever his creed, color, or condition. In him inherently is goodness, dignity, and service. He must be freed from bondage wherever he is, bondage of body, bondage of soul, bondage of ignorance. He must be helped, protected, fed, and permitted to grow\u2026<\/em><\/p>

And it is only in his letters to Cummings (of what I\u2019ve seen) that he acknowledges the danger of his situation, and his own fear:<\/p>

Death? There\u2019s no ignoring the fact that he rides with us out here. As I\u2019ve written you before, I fear battle as much as the next man, maybe more. But there are things worth dying for, if that is the price. That\u2019s the theme of every engine-song that screams through the sky. Death, I don\u2019t want, but if death, it\u2019s to be, perhaps I\u2019ll find my own soul\u2026<\/em><\/p>

Stubbie\u2019s exchange with Cummings reveals him to be a deeply thoughtful young man, aware of injustices in the world and determined to right them, whatever the cost.<\/p>

But though everything in the Pearson collection tells us this young man was universally beloved, it stands to reason that not everyone knew Stubbie like this; with his thoughts and dreams and fears laid out bare. It\u2019s his letters that give us that opportunity. This is likely why Cummings published excerpts of these letters at all, for this correspondence survives in Rauner\u2019s archive only in newspaper clippings, and not in the original.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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It\u2019s this tension between what the artifacts reveal and what they don\u2019t that reminds us that the Ransom and Maria and Stubbie aren\u2019t characters in a book; they\u2019re people\u2014messy, complicated, and, at times, confusing or unknowable.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Indeed, while the stories contained in all these letters paint vivid pictures, what really throws them into high-definition is the way the artifacts themselves\u2014what we have and what we don\u2019t; what form they take or what state they\u2019re in\u2014tell us almost as much as the words on the page. We have nearly every one of Ransom\u2019s letters preserved in the collection\u2014301 documents spread across 37 folders in three boxes. Of Maria\u2019s responses we have only 82, though based on context in his missives we can assume she wrote at least as often as he. I like to imagine that Maria carefully saved every letter he wrote her. Ransom, always on the move and carrying everything he had, would have been significantly more limited in what he could keep. Perhaps the surviving letters were his favorites. Perhaps he was as much of a sentimental pack-rat as I am, and he found a way to send some home, imagining he might go back and reread them someday, when the war was just a distant memory.<\/p>

What we don\u2019t <\/em>have is an ending to this tale. The last letter is from Ransom as he boards the train home. He expresses once again how desperate he is to see Maria, and how ecstatic he is that it should be any day now. And that\u2019s it. We don\u2019t see their reunion. There\u2019s no traditional denouement to their story as told through their letters. Of course there isn\u2019t\u2014they didn\u2019t need to write anymore. In fact, we don\u2019t have any record about their lives after Ransom\u2019s return. Some extensive Google searching revealed they had one son and one daughter, and that Ransom played with the New London cadet band. He was regarded as a skilled woodsman, hunter, and fishermen. Ransom and Maria lived to the ripe old ages of 86 and 81, respectively, and they\u2019re buried together in the Old Main Street Cemetery in New London. But after the depth and color their letters gave their lives through the Civil War, that meager list of facts reads like the \u201cwhere are they now\u201d text in the thirty seconds before the credits roll.\u00a0<\/p>

As for Stubbie\u2014as I\u2019ve noted, many of his letters survive in Rauner because excerpts were printed in newspapers; it\u2019s clear that those who cared about Stubbie wanted the world to know him the way they did, and that alone tells us a great deal about how highly he was regarded. I\u2019m disappointed we don\u2019t have more of his letters, though, because it seems to me that the glimpse of Stubbie\u2019s philosophy we get from Cummings\u2019s column only raises more questions. I couldn\u2019t shake the sense that there was something driving Stubbie\u2019s desire to leave the world better than he found it, and the tireless way he threw himself into every community he joined, but I never quite figured out what that was. Perhaps, as he says to Cummings, Stubbie was still trying to \u201cfind his own soul\u201d and didn\u2019t know yet himself. He certainly writes at times like he\u2019s trying to work out his thoughts on the page. But I\u2019ve always wondered what we might glean from the rest of his letters to Cummings, or even if there were other exchanges\u2014perhaps to his family or his girlfriend Ann\u2014that would fill in the gaps.<\/p>

Or maybe Stubbie just ran out of time; unlike Ransom, Stubbie never came home from the war. He was killed in a raid against a Japanese destroyer in 1944\u2014just two years after graduating from Dartmouth. Perhaps, if he\u2019d lived longer, Stubbie would have grown into his grand ideas and dreams, and maybe we\u2019d have gotten lucky and found that echoed in his archival record. As it stands, though, while Stubbie\u2019s letters tell us a great deal about his character and his heart, they can\u2019t capture him completely, and he remains a bit of a mystery.<\/p>

In some ways, it\u2019s this tension between what the artifacts reveal and what they don\u2019t that reminds us that the Ransom and Maria and Stubbie aren\u2019t characters in a book; they\u2019re people\u2014messy, complicated, and, at times, confusing or unknowable. It stands to reason the archival record doesn\u2019t encapsulate them entirely. What matters is that it captures enough that the echoes of their lives resonate into the present.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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If we can gain so much by engaging with the people history remembers, there may be a similar value in connecting with those it deemed unimportant.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In his recent book Breaking Bread with the Dead, <\/em>Alan Jacobs argues for the value of reading old books by contending that the past is another culture and, in the same way that traveling abroad widens our horizons, exposing ourselves to the thoughts of the dead will expand and strengthen our moral and intellectual foundations. If we can gain so much by engaging with the people history remembers, there may be a similar value in connecting with those it deemed unimportant. Their stories aren\u2019t as curated as the ideas of those writers and thinkers whose works survive until today; they offer us a rawer look at another time. But perhaps they also appeal to a common human experience that helps us understand and engage their ideas more fully; Ransom\u2019s apathy towards the politics of the Civil War doesn\u2019t always compute to me, still living with the ramifications of it over a century later. But the fact that this is in part due to his fear, exhaustion, and grief over the death surrounding him is something I can easily imagine, if not perfectly understand. And it has changed the way I reflect on what is important to me.<\/p>

At the end of my year in Rauner, I hadn\u2019t had an epiphany about exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. But in meeting Stubbie and the Sargents, among others, I discovered a far more significant question\u2014how<\/em> do I want to live it? The overarching narrative today is that my career will define me, and my accomplishments will reflect the value my life adds to the world. But when I sit with the people I met during my year at Rauner, I see a very different story; what survives of Ransom and Maria\u2019s life are their faithfulness and unrelenting hope during the Civil War, rather than whatever they did with the rest of their many, many decades. Stubbie was and is remembered for his stalwart dedication to a cause and to his ideals, not just for his athletic successes or for the career he never got to have. When I think back on working with their collections, what stands out to me are those qualities that make up their character, not their achievements. So now, when I imagine what story I want my records to tell someday, I don\u2019t dwell on what tasks will fill my time. Instead, I look for opportunities to be the kind of person who will be remembered for kindness, generosity, perseverance, courage, and conviction\u2014just as I remember Ransom, Maria, and Stubbie.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Sara Holston<\/strong> is an editor on an interactive story game in San Francisco, CA. <\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading the letters of two soldiers\u2014one who fought in the Civil War and the other in World War II\u2014reveals truths not just about the realities of war, but also about what matters 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