Afternoons with Emily Read Free

for you.”
    This proved to be Miss Marian Latham, a Bulfinch neighbor on Beacon Hill. She was a small, stunning beauty, a startling replica
     of the nymph Arethusa, whose profile graced my father’s lucky gold coin.
    “I have your head right here in my pocket,” said my delighted father, taking out the coin to show her. There is no record
     of her reply to this startling and charming overture. I imagine she went on smiling, and my father went on staring. I cannot
     imagine them talking — that afternoon or ever. Actually, I have no memory of my parents in conversation.
    The Marian Latham Chase I knew was an elegant figure, rarely seen, who spoke only platitudes and stared with lovely vacant
     eyes. My maternal grandmother, Eliza Cabot Latham, died in childbirth when my mother, Marian, was three. Many of my relatives
     remember the pretty, lonely child growing up motherless in the big house at number 32. Even then, the weakness to which she
     would later succumb had been present in the occasional gasping for air, the labored breathing as she slept, the flushed cheeks
     upon exertion. But this was rarely discussed and certainly never outside the immediate family.
    Marian Latham finished her classes and lessons at eighteen. She was considered “accomplished” — that is, she wrote a pretty
     hand, sang a bit, and spoke flawless French. If she was remote, it was attributed to breeding, her stillness a quality to
     admire in a future wife. Furthermore, she was a noted beauty, an ornament to Boston society — and an heiress to a great fortune.
     Surely there must be a brilliant match waiting for such a belle! Yet at twenty-nine she was somehow still single. Her kindly
     relations had scoured Boston for years, collecting partners for Marian at their parties. But these introductions seemed to
     lead no further once the young eligibles learned that Marian’s delicate eyes and complexion were but early symptoms of the
     inevitable declining health that lay ahead.
    As a small child I wondered so often what she was thinking, what her secrets were. I soon learned that her secret was a terrible
     one: tuberculosis, the disease whose diagnosis was a virtual death sentence. This stalker of health spared no one. Even the
     rich and eminent — Chopin, Thoreau, Lanier, and Keats — were felled by it. Marian’s father was a known consumptive, a semi-invalid
     who seldom left home. Marian herself was a “parlor case,” with an early history of coughing blood but with intervals of better
     health and cautious activity. It is easy to see how my mother, already somewhat withdrawn by temperament and circumstances,
     would be further distanced from the world by knowledge of her fatal disease. It was there in the house already, eating at
     her father. Any morning it might turn and ravage her too. How could she ever be unguarded and carefree?
    This was the situation in 1840 when my father, a stranger to Boston society, appeared with his proposal. What a sigh of relief
     must have emanated from the tired Lathams! I can almost hear them now, congratulating each other.
    “A capital fellow!” the Howes and Lathams and Curtises assured one another.
    “From somewhere in the Connecticut River Valley . . . a bit older, but that Marian needs a steady hand. Harvard ’14, and on
     the faculty there now. Mark my words, Marian will be fine!”
    My parents were engaged in a fortnight and married just after Easter 1841. There were reasons for this modish hurry; my Latham
     grandfather was seriously consumptive, and the engaged couple were not young. So the double parlors and the spiral stair at
     32 Mount Vernon Street were hung with garlands of white lilac and crowded with relatives in silk and serge. The Chases, coming
     from Springfield, never guessed how few festivals had graced the handsome house.
    The bridal pair spent a week in Newport, in a house lent by a pious Howe cousin whose rectitude had been enriched by a hundred
     years in the slave