New York August 1901
I am on a train to see you and your parents in New York. One afternoon, when your mother is not home and if I do not lose courage, I will entrust these pages to you. Little Claire, I hope you can forgive me for laying the burden of my confession on you. I am selfish, and need one person to know the whole of my beliefs. I want you to know that we women have imagination enough to invent the history of a world.
There is a publisher in Manhattan who will receive my manuscript. Alberton arranged it all, and provided me with plates he made of my flower sketches. I almost left them behind—I’m still ashamed of how poorly they reproduce the visions in my mind—but I did not want his fine engravings to go to waste. He has been a good friend.
I am nervous about many reasonable things—this long journey, my failing health, my husband’s growing awareness that I will leave him soon. I’m dreading the moment the manuscript leaves my hands. Once the book is published, I cannot take these wild claims back; I will be the old woman from St. Louis who insists she flew to Mars. I must remind myself that I seek to spare the ones I love from the fog of grief that consumed my mother, and almost consumed me.
I hope that I got it all wrong, though. I hope that when you too have passed into the Silence, I will be on the other side to welcome you.
I dreamed you into this world, Gentolēna̤. At the moment of your creation, I held the entirety of you in my hands. What a miracle we all are.
Sara Weiss
August 14, 1901
You are not resting easily. Ah, that is better. Now you are tranquil, and now—you are free, and we are off for Ento.Page 382