A Woman of Independent Means (35 page)

July 22, 1922
Dallas

Dear Dwight,

What an extraordinary wedding present!

When I opened the box and saw the beautiful leather-bound book, I assumed it was some rare edition and wondered why there was no title imprinted on the binding. Then I opened it and saw the exquisite vellum pages—all blank except for your inscription. Who else but you would know the excitement I would feel on being presented with a book of blank pages? Our thoughts are among the few things we can leave behind us in permanent form and I am anxious to begin writing—though somewhat awed at the thought of opening that handsome volume and seeing my own efforts enshrined.

Why is it never enough for me just to live my life? From the time I was a child and started my first scrapbook, I have always looked upon my own experience with the eye of an artist trying to shape it into something more interesting than it was. My scrapbooks are filled with newspaper clippings about other people, some of whom I barely knew, as if their activities could somehow extend the boundaries of my own experience or perhaps, less than satisfied with my own achievements, I hoped to share vicariously in theirs.

Sometimes I think it is that same frustration with life as it is lived day by day that compels me to write such long letters to people who seldom reply in kind, if indeed they reply at all. Somehow by compressing and editing the events of my life, I infuse them with a dramatic intensity totally lacking at the time, but oddly enough I find that years later what I remember is not the event as I lived it but as I described it in a letter. I find the very act of writing turns fact into fiction and for that I thank God with all of my heart. And I thank you for the book that will preserve my life in the form I impose upon it. It occurs to me we are all capable of adding another dimension to our daily lives if we would but look upon the people around us as characters in a drama devised for our amusement. There is no life too dull to be transformed into art by a lively imagination. Even Rumpelstiltskin began with straw.

I am anxious for you to meet my new husband, but who knows when we will travel east again. He is appalled that I have crossed the Alps but never seen the Rockies, and is planning road trips across the western United States that should keep us busy for several summers. In the meantime I am subscribing to
The New York Times
so at least I can be with you in spirit.

With abiding affection,
Bess

September 5, 1925
Dallas

Dear Lydia,

Promise you will destroy this letter after you read it.

This morning I looked in the mirror and saw a woman Rob would not recognize. The slender, high-spirited girl he married is as dead as her handsome and adoring first husband.

In the three years since I married Sam, I have gained thirty pounds. Dear Sam ... I must not blame him—at least not entirely—for what I have become. He is still the same man—weight included—that he was on our wedding day. In fact, he seems to thrive on the domestic routine that marriage enforces on unsuspecting individuals.

My first marriage survived many storms—from within and without—but no turbulence can compare to the agony of being becalmed, with no wind in sight. Like the Ancient Mariner, I inhabit “a painted ship upon a painted sea.”

Marriage to your brother did nothing to prepare me for life with Sam. Rob and I had our battles in the beginning, but I was more in love with him when he died than on our wedding day. Poor Sam! How can he compete with a memory that is not only perfect in itself but allows me to exist in perfect freedom?

The camping trips Sam plans each summer are my only escape from a daily existence that grows more oppressive each year. We returned from New Mexico yesterday and have no plans to leave home again until next summer, when Sam hopes to explore Utah. After shepherding the children and me west for three years, he is finally beginning to feel we qualify for American citizenship.

Last year I added a screened-in sleeping porch to the house —at my own expense—so that Sam could recapture the sensation of camping outdoors and I could remain in the bedroom, reading as late as I liked. Sam loves the breeze but expects me to fall asleep at his side. And not at the hour of my choosing but when he is ready to retire—on the dot of ten every night of his life. If I ask to leave on my light and read, he does not forbid it but laments that he cannot fall asleep for the sound of the moths flailing their wings against the screen in a futile effort to reach the light.

Last night I lay beside him staring into the dark till he fell asleep, then crept stealthily back into the bedroom and read till dawn. Unfortunately I succumbed to sleep with the book still in my lap so my absence from his bed did not go unnoticed. Though he did not dare confront me directly, he took particular pleasure in summoning me to a breakfast I was in no mood to enjoy after only two hours of sleep.

The children start school next week, but I am not sure they are being properly challenged here and am considering sending Andrew East next year. His manners would profit as much as his mind. Naturally he is adamantly opposed to the idea, even though I have had a place reserved for him at Choate since he was a child. Like most of our friends, he believes the best of everything can be found right here at home. The more he argues, the more he convinces me I am right in wanting to broaden his outlook.

Though Sam objects in principle to a prep-school education, I do not think he would mind having the other male voice at the dinner table silenced and moved a polite distance away. Friction between father and son is to be expected, I suppose, but the tensions are exacerbated when the father is as new to his role as Sam. There are nights, after an especially vocal dinner, when I wonder whatever made me think it was best for the children if I married again. Or—dare I say it?—for me.

Now destroy this letter, dearest Lydia, and dismiss its contents from your mind, as I must do if I am to continue living within the bonds of holy wedlock.

I love you as Rob's sister
—and mine,
Bess

April 5, 1926
Dallas

Dear Dwight,

Andrew was notified by letter today that he has been accepted at Choate for the fall semester. I have never seen him so excited. Thank you for all your efforts in his behalf.

He is quite conscious of the fact that he is about to embark on a journey that no one in his family—or indeed no one he knows here—has ever made before him, and the thought fills him with pride, along with barely concealed apprehension. It is just as much of an accomplishment for a young man from this part of the country to travel eastward, back to the tradition-bound institutions of his ancestors, as it was for the pioneers to travel westward into uncharted territory. To be sure he will not face physical obstacles, but the intellectual challenges ahead of him are equally formidable.

As much as I would like to accompany him when he boards the train in September, I know I must stay behind. However, I am already looking forward to visiting him later in the year and then spending some time in New York. A dispassionate observer might even question my motives for sending my child away to school, seeing what an unassailable excuse it provides for frequent trips to my favorite city.

I have a feeling it is going to be a glorious fall. I can hardly wait.

A bientôt,
Bess

June 28, 1926
Dallas

Dear Lydia and Manning,

We are celebrating several separate occasions Saturday with a family picnic for all our friends, and I hope you can join us. Come for the weekend if you can and of course bring Marian and Mother Steed with you.

Sam and I will be observing our fourth wedding anniversary and concurrently, as usual, our country's independence. We will also be celebrating an eminent arrival and a departure. Our first neighbors, the newspaper editor, Harold D. Perkins, and his wife, will begin building a house on their lot next fall, at the same time Andrew will be leaving for Choate.

I am sure you will find it to your advantage to get to know a man of such widespread influence as our new neighbor. I have been looking forward to his prospective proximity from the day we bought our lot and have been disappointed by his continued delay in starting construction. I had the impression when we began building that he and his wife would soon be following our example, but the more I saw of them, the less definite their plans seemed to become.

When I called to invite him to the party, he first declined, saying he had houseguests. Then I explained the party was partly in his honor, to welcome him to the neighborhood, and the invitation of course included his guests. He hesitantly agreed to make a brief appearance at the party, reluctant, I am sure, to impose unduly on my hospitality. He confessed that he had never been inside the homes of any of his present neighbors and had come to depend on the privacy this lack of intimacy afforded. I assured him I agreed completely in principle, the only exception being a case where individuals share enough common interests to be friends at any distance. I also made the point that there was no reason why our friendship could not profit from our proximity—as long as it was not based on it.

We look forward to seeing all of you next weekend—fried chicken, fireworks, and new friends await you.

Love,
Bess

September 10, 1926
Dallas

My darling Drew,

Forgive me for reverting to a name you put aside long ago, with your teddy bears and toy soldiers, but it is hard for me to face the fact that I have lost my little boy forever. A young man with the same sweet smile is still sleeping in his bedroom but tomorrow even he will be gone.

I am driving this letter downtown to the main post office tonight so it will travel east on the same train with you. It is a comforting illusion to believe that part of me is making the trip with you, even if it is just a piece of paper. But a piece of paper can be a powerful presence. I have always had enormous respect for the written word and invariably find a letter more revealing than a face-to-face conversation. In a strange way I suspect I will get to know you better at a distance than I would if you had stayed home.