Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the story of his life

The friendly teacher sometimes took Curtis with him to make evening calls on young ladies. Returning quite late on one occasion the daring pupil reached his room by way of the waterspout, for which adventure his tutor was reprimanded. Another imprudent action on the part of the boyish teacher which naturally aroused criticism was riding on horseback with one of the girls from the opposite boarding-school, this damsel quietly climbing out of the window to take these rides in the early morning, while her schoolmates were still asleep.

In these years Wentworth Higginson seems to have been somewhat of a dandy, rejoicing in what bits of fine apparel his scanty means allowed him to lay hands on. For he reported himself once as ‘strutting’ after church to display the ‘combination of gaiters and high heels’; and said also that he had his hair cut and curled which improved it. He sometimes went to parties and was fond of playing whist. After one of these gatherings he wrote, ‘By the way, nudity was rather the rage.’ He also recorded the possession of ‘a sudden entire confidence’ in his conversing powers; and on the arrival of visitors he ‘talked with calm miscellaneousness till tea-time.’ His family were a little uneasy about him at this time, and his sisters found fault with him for being frivolous, whereupon he wrote in his journal: ‘I had ’