Miss Dillingham

Miss Dillingham was the Chelsea schoolteacher who became Mary Antin's first American friend and the single most important mentor of her early years in the new country. She was the teacher who first put Mary's name in print, who gave her the first book she ever owned, and who later met her on Boston Common to hear the sorrowful revelations of her adolescence. Her approval was so dear to Mary that she could hardly name her with the rest of her teachers, though she mentioned none of them lightly. She signed her name as M.S. Dillingham, and it was in Chelsea, Massachusetts, that she exercised her quiet, decisive influence on the young immigrant's life.

Identity and Introduction

Mary found Miss Dillingham in the next grade after her first year of schooling, and the teacher became so dear a friend that the girl could hardly name her with the rest of her instructors. Her approval was always precious, first because she was "Teacher," and afterwards, as long as she lived, because she was her Miss Dillingham. The bond was formed early and deepened through a series of small, significant acts of kindness. Miss Dillingham was the one who first put Mary's name in print, publishing her pupil's work in a paper with a brief explanatory note signed "M.S. DILLINGHAM" from Chelsea, Massachusetts. She was also the one to start Mary's library, presenting her with a thin volume of Longfellow's poems just before locking up her desk one evening. Mary had never owned a book before, and the sense of possession alone was a source of bliss; this book she already knew and loved. The gift was a bottomless treasure to the girl who had arrived in America with nothing.

Mentorship and Discipline

Miss Dillingham's influence was not limited to encouragement; she also administered the first discipline of Mary's school career, and the next to the last. Shortly after Mary's admission to her class, the class was repeating in chorus the Lord's Prayer, heads bowed on desks. Mary was doing her best to keep up by the sound, though her mind could not go beyond the word "hallowed," for which she had not found the meaning. In the middle of the prayer, a Jewish boy across the aisle trod on her foot to get her attention, admonishing in a solemn whisper that she must not say the prayer because it was Christian. Mary whispered back that it wasn't, and went on to the "Amen," not knowing whether the boy was right but bound to do everything the class did. All Miss Dillingham knew was that two of her pupils whispered during morning prayer, and she disciplined them both, degrading Mary from the honor row to the lowest row. It was many a day before Mary forgave that young missionary; it was not enough for her vengeance that he suffered punishment with her. Teacher heard both of them defend themselves, but there was a time and a place for religious arguments, and she meant to help them remember that point. The lesson in proper American conduct was one Mary would carry forward, later recognizing the same principle when another teacher instructed her in the doctrine of the separation of Church and State.

The Longfellow Gift and Literary Encouragement

Mary's half-hours with Miss Dillingham were full of delight, quite apart from her new-born ambition to become a writer. The teacher encouraged her poetic efforts even though Mary herself admitted, making fair allowance for her youth, retarded education, and strangeness to the language, that she never wrote good verse. Mary loved to read it, and Miss Dillingham nurtured that love. The presentation of the Longfellow volume was the culmination of this encouragement, and Mary's regret was deep when she considered that Miss Dillingham was gone before she had given much of an account of all her gifts of love and service. The teacher's influence extended beyond the classroom; when Mary was promoted to the grammar school about the middle of the year, she walked on air, feeling herself a student now in earnest, and she continued to write long letters to Miss Dillingham, almost daily for some time, when she found in her heart such depths of woe as she could not pack into rhyme.

The Boston Common Rendezvous

When Mary's adolescent troubles grew too great for verse or prose, she implored Miss Dillingham to come to her and hear her sorrowful revelations. She did not want the teacher to come to the house, where there was no privacy; she asked instead whether Miss Dillingham would meet her on Boston Common at a certain time. Miss Dillingham was a devoted friend and a wise woman, and she met Mary on Boston Common. It was a gray autumn day, possibly drizzling, and Mary was cold sitting on the bench, but thrilled through and through with the sense of the magnitude of her troubles and the romantic nature of the rendezvous. Miss Dillingham understood what all these symptoms betokened, and she wisely gave Mary no inkling of her diagnosis. She let the girl talk and kept a grave face. She did not belittle the troubles, the specific charges Mary made against her home, members of her family, and life in general; she did not say that Mary would get over them, that every growing girl suffers from the blues, that she was a little goose stretching her wings for flight. She told her rather that it would be noble to bear her sorrows bravely, to soothe those who irritated her, to live each day with all her might. She reminded Mary of great men and women who had suffered and who overcame their troubles by living and working. She sent the girl home amazingly comforted, her pettiness and self-consciousness routed by the quiet influence of Miss Dillingham's gray eyes searching hers. This, or something like this, had to be repeated many times, as anybody will know who was present at the slow birth of his manhood.

The Graduation Day Presence

Miss Dillingham was present at Mary's graduation from grammar school, a day that was nothing less than a triumph for the girl. The assembly hall was crowded to bursting, but Mary's friends had no trouble in finding seats; they were ushered up to the platform, which was reserved for guests of honor. Mary was very proud to see her friends treated with such distinction. Her parents were there, and Frieda, of course; Miss Dillingham, and some others of her Chelsea teachers. When Mary stepped up on the stage to read her composition, she was seized with stage fright, but she read on mechanically, having rehearsed many times, and told the story of a beautiful little boy, her cousin, whom she had loved very dearly and who died in far-distant Russia some years after she came to America. The triumph turned to ashes, however, when Mary, prompted by the girls around her, rose after the exercises to thank the assembly and was silenced by Mr. Swan, the principal. In her shame, she could not bear to look up at her friends on the platform, and she wondered what Miss Dillingham was thinking of her. The teacher's presence at this moment of public disgrace, as Mary perceived it, underscored the depth of the bond between them; Miss Dillingham was not merely a classroom instructor but a witness to the girl's whole American formation, from her first printed words to her most humiliating public mistake.