Introduction
1. “List of New Books,” Athenaeum, Dec. 26, 1919, 1411.
2. Among scholars, much less general readers, The Backwash of War long remained unknown. Twenty years ago, it was difficult to find any scholarship about it. More recent works have begun to fill that void, including Christine E. Hallett, Nurse Writers of the Great War (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2016); Hazel Hutchison, The War that Used Up Words: American Writers and the First World War (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2015); Giorgio Mariani, Waging War on War: Peacefighting in American Literature (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2015); Margaret R. Higonnet, introduction to Nurses at the Front (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 2001); and “Ellen La Motte and Mary Borden, a Nursing Couple,” in Bi-Textualität: Inszenierungen des Paares, ed. Annegret Heitmann, Sigrid Nieberle, Barbara Schaff, and Sabine Schülting (Bielefeld: Erich Schmidt, 2001), 92–103; and Angela K. Smith, The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism and the First World War (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2000). Two earlier works are Claire M. Tylee, The Great War and Women’s Consciousness (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), and Charles V. Genthe, American War Narratives, 1917–1918 (New York: David Lewis, 1969).
3. La Motte also kept a diary during the war, which Lea M. Williams mentions in a footnote to “Ellen N. La Motte: The Making of a Nurse, Writer, and Activist,” Nursing History Review 23 (2015): 56–86. Williams has declined to share the location of the diary, which is in a private collection, and I have been unable to locate it. Additionally, there is a war essay, “Experiences in the American Ambulance Hospital, Neuilly, France,” which La Motte clearly wrote but which was not published under her name. It is discussed later in this introduction.
4. Among the few works that focus on aspects of La Motte’s life, apart from her war nursing, are Alice Kelly, “The American Friends,” Times Literary Supplement, March 29, 2017, 17–19; Williams, “Ellen N. La Motte”; Keiko Sugiyama, “Ellen N. La Motte, 1873–1961: Gender and Race in Nursing,” Japanese Journal of American Studies 17 (2006): 126–42; and Sugiyama, “Ellen N. La Motte: A Nurse in the ‘Orient,’ ” Keisen Jogakuen College Bulletin 17 (2005): 87–102.
5. The book’s copyright date is September 22, 1916. Catalogue of Copyright Entries—Books, part 1, vol. 13, entry 5647 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Copyright Office, 1916), 906.
6. The advertisement appeared in the back pages of other books published by Putnam and in various publications.
7. Robert Lynd, “The Backwash of War,” Publisher’s Weekly, Sept. 16, 1916, 850.
8. “Backwash of War,” New York Times Book Review, Oct. 15, 1916, 432.
9. “The Backwash of War,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 13, 1917, 6.
10. “Ellen La Motte’s Stories Gripping, Grewsome, Great,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 14, 1917, 23.
11. In the 1980s Angela Ingram wrote to the Bodley Head, which had acquired Putnam, and confirmed that the book had been published in England in 1916. Angela Ingram, “Un/Reproductions: Estates of Banishment in English Fiction after the Great War,” in Women’s Writing in Exile, ed. Mary Lynn Broe and Angela Ingram (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1989), 343n4.
12. “Organization and Work of the ‘Military Room’ of the Official Press Bureau,” WAR: Censorship by the Press Bureau during 1914–1918 collection, National Archives, London, United Kingdom.
13. According to the date stamp in the book, the British Library received it on October 14, 1919.
14. “More Truth from the Trenches,” Pearson’s Magazine 38, no. 6 (Dec. 1917): 265.
15. “ ‘The Backwash of War,’ by Ellen La Motte,” Issues and Events: American Liberal Review 8, no. 4 (Jan. 26, 1918): 110.
16. “Miss La Motte’s Book,” Wilmington (DE) Morning News, Sept. 6, 1917, 4.
17. Alice Sweeney, “The Backwash of War,” Vassar Miscellany Monthly 3, no. 5 (March 1918): 208.
18. “Book Review,” Harvard Monthly, 62, no. 10 (Feb. 1917): 281–82.
19. Marguerite Mooers Marshall, “Love for Wife and Home a Marked Characteristic of the Wounded Poilu,” New York Evening World, May 30, 1918, 8.
20. “Ellen La Motte’s Stories,” 23.
21. “Backwash of War,” NYT Book Review, 432.
22. “By the Way,” New World: A Monthly Journal of Christian Thought and Practice 1, no. 7 (July 1918): 167.
23. “More Truth from the Trenches,” 264.
24. Marshall, “Love for Wife and Home,” 8.
25. Robert Morss Lovett, “Books in Brief,” New Republic, Nov. 7, 1934, 374–75.
26. W. G. Fuller, “The Lady with the Lamp,” Masses, Jan. 1917, 29–30.
27. Floyd Dell, “The Book of the Month,” Masses, Jan. 1917, 30.
28. “Liberator Book Shop,” Liberator, April 1918, 42; and Sept. 1918, 35.
29. Margaret Lane, “The Liberator and the News Stands,” Liberator, Dec. 1918, 49.
30. “Safeguarding Our Minds,” Nation, Dec. 28, 1918, 795; and H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917–1918 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1957), 100.
31. “List of New Books,” 1411.
32. Rand Book Store Advertisement, “Timely Books Make Ideal Gifts,” Nation, Dec. 13, 1919, x.
33. G. P. Putnam’s Sons royalty statements sent to La Motte, located in a private collection.
34. Skygac’s Column, Cleveland Toiler, March 26, 1920, 2.
35. “The Russian Soldier,” Liberator, April 1920, 47.
36. “Books and Authors,” New York Times Book Review, Aug. 12, 1934, 15.
37. The Literary Guidepost was distributed by the Associated Press. The review ran in many newspapers, including the Wilkes-Barre (PA) Record, Aug. 30, 1934, 8.
38. This version of the review, titled “Scanning New Books,” appeared in many newspapers, including the St. Cloud (MN) Times, Aug. 28, 1934, 7.
39. Lovett, “Books in Brief,” 375.
40. “So This Is War,” Fitchburg (MA) Sentinel, Feb. 15, 1936, 3.
41. Genthe, American War Narratives, 157.
42. Bruce Cook, Dalton Trumbo (New York: Scribner, 1977), 130.
43. Edith Wharton, Fighting France, From Dunkerque to Belport (New York: Scribner, 1915), 54, 135.
44. The Detroit Journal article was reprinted, under the title “The Backwash of War,” in other newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 3, 1917, 6.
45. Hutchison, War That Used Up Words, 160.
46. Stein also became a godparent to Hemingway’s son Jack, who was born in 1923.
47. Stein’s copy of Backwash was donated, as part of Stein’s personal library, to Yale University’s Beinecke Library.
48. Eric Solomon, “From Christ in Flanders to Catch-22: An Approach to War Fiction,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 11, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 854–55.
49. Frank H. Mason, “The American Ambulance,” Survey 34, no. 25 (Sept. 18, 1915): 563–64.
50. Through labyrinthine research, I have been able to identify the article’s ostensible authors as Katherine Kerr and Marion E. Hesseltine, both unpublished American nurses who worked with La Motte at the American Ambulance in Paris. By borrowing their initials, La Motte, a very prominent figure in the field of public health and regular contributor to the American Journal of Nursing, was able to cloak her authorship of the essay. Even so, readers might have suspected something was amiss, as it was peculiar for the journal not to print authors’ full names.
Interestingly, two months later, in June 1915, Kerr did publish an essay, “War Treatment of Wounds and Illnesses,” in the American Journal of Nursing. It is a straightforward work, which does not resemble La Motte’s war writing in style, about the American Ambulance Hospital. In it Kerr discusses in detail the transport of patients from battlefield to hospital and the protocol for treating various types of cases, replete with hand-drawn illustrations.
51. K. K. and M. E. H., “Experiences in the American Ambulance Hospital, Neuilly, France,” American Journal of Nursing 15, no. 7 (April 1915), 549–54.
52. Emily Crane Chadbourne to Gertrude Stein, Sept. 3 [1915], Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (hereafter YU).
53. Evarts B. Greene, ed., War Readings (New York: Scribner, 1918), iii.
54. Edna L. Foley, “Reading for Public Health Nurses,” American Journal of Nursing 17, no. 1 (Oct. 1916): 62.
55. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Scribner, 1929), 196.
56. Christine E. Hallett focuses on this subject in Nurse Writers of the Great War, and Anne Powell offers a sampling of works by British writers in Women in the War Zone: Hospital Service in the First World War (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2009).
57. Olive Dent, A V.A.D. in France (London: Richards, 1917), 39.
58. Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914–1915 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1915), 89–90, 104. The book is commonly attributed to Kathleen Luard.
59. “Hôpital Mobile No. 1,” British Journal of Nursing, Sept. 16, 1916, 232.
60. Violetta Thurstan, Field Hospital and Flying Column (London: Putnam, 1915), 28.
61. Violetta Thurstan, A Text Book of War Nursing (London: Putnam, 1917), 13.
62. Marie Van Vorst, War Letters of an American Woman (London: John Lane, 1916), 153, 247. Van Vorst also inaccurately indicates that La Motte was already nursing in Belgium in December 1914.
63. Van Vorst, War Letters, 108, 110.
64. The Forbidden Zone was published in England in 1929 and in the United States in 1930.
65. Mary Borden, Journey Down a Blind Alley (New York: Harper, 1946), 6–8.
66. Agnes Warner, My Beloved Poilus (St. John, NB: Barnes, 1917), 60, 66.
67. Maud Mortimer, A Green Tent in Flanders (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1917), 66, 178.
68. Borden, Journey Down a Blind Alley, 8.
69. Marshall, “Love for Wife and Home,” 8.
70. Warner, My Beloved Poilus, 60, 63, 65.
71. Mortimer, Green Tent, 56.
72. Warner, My Beloved Poilus, 89.
73. Mortimer, Green Tent, 226.
74. Mary Borden, The Forbidden Zone (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1930), 105.
75. Borden, preface to Forbidden Zone.
76. Mortimer, Green Tent, 146, 153.
77. Mortimer, Green Tent, 153.
78. Warner, My Beloved Poilus, 81.
79. Borden, Forbidden Zone, 78, 82.
80. Chadbourne to Stein, Sept. 3 [1915]. Chadbourne and La Motte became a couple during the first winter of the war and remained together until La Motte’s death in 1961.
81. Mortimer, Green Tent, 156–59.
82. Mortimer, Green Tent, 183.
Biography
1. Variations in the written form of the family surnames are standardized here as “duPont” and “La Motte,” except when they appear in quoted text. Likewise, the name of the family company is standardized as the DuPont Company.
2. Marquis James, Alfred I. duPont: The Family Rebel (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1941), 96.
3. “La Motte, Ellen,” JHH School of Nursing Applications, Ellen N. La Motte files, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (hereafter JHMI).
4. James, Alfred I. duPont, 82–83, 101–3, 123–25, 129.
5. “La Motte, Ellen,” JHH application, JHMI.
6. “La Motte, Ellen,” JHH application.
7. La Motte to Miss Adelaide Nutting, Sept. 23, 1898, “La Motte, Ellen,” JHH applications, JHMI.
8. “Social and Personal Notes,” Wilmington (DE) Evening Journal, Nov. 26, 1898, 4.
9. “World of Society,” Wilmington (DE) Morning News, Nov. 26, 1898, 6.
10. “Hospital and Training-School Items,” American Journal of Nursing 3, no. 5 (Feb. 1903): 375.
11. Ellen La Motte, “Early Struggles with Contagion,” American Journal of Nursing 1, no. 8 (May 1901): 545.
12. Ellen N. La Motte, “A Modern Italian Hospital,” American Journal of Nursing 4, no. 12 (Sept. 1904): 936, 938.
13. James, Alfred I. duPont, 15, 19.
14. Ellen N. La Motte, “Tuberculosis Work of the Instructive Visiting Nurse Association of Baltimore,” American Journal of Nursing 6, no. 3 (Dec. 1905): 142, 146–47.
15. See the list of La Motte’s publications in this volume.
16. “Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Convention of the Nurses’ Associated Alumnae of the United States,” American Journal of Nursing 9, no. 12 (September 1909): 931. “Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Convention of the Nurses’ Associated Alumnae of the United States,” American Journal of Nursing 12, no. 11 (August 1912): 940.
17. M. R. Pennock, Makers of Nursing History (New York: Lakeside, 1940), 136.
18. Ellen N. La Motte, “Humor of the Districts,” Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine 5, no. 1 (Feb. 1906): 42; and Ellen N. La Motte, “Humor of the Districts,” Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine 4, no. 4 (Nov. 1905): 220.
19. “Tuberculosis Nurses Named,” Baltimore Sun, March 30, 1909, 14; “Nursing News and Announcements,” American Journal of Nursing 9, no. 10 (July 1909): 781; “Nursing News and Announcements,” American Journal of Nursing 10, no. 6 (March 1910): 434; and “To Fight Tuberculosis,” Baltimore Sun, Dec. 24, 1909, 6.
20. Articles appeared in early 1911 in the Washington Post, Arizona Republic, Pittsburgh Daily Post, and numerous other papers.
21. “Tuberculosis Nurses at Work,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 4, 1910, 14.
22. “The Charm of Kissing,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 13, 1910, 4. The article was also reprinted in numerous other papers.
23. “Department of Visiting Nursing and Social Welfare,” American Journal of Nursing 12, no. 5 (Feb. 1912): 419–20; and “Department of Visiting Nursing and Social Welfare,” American Journal of Nursing 13, no. 3 (Dec. 1912): 201.
24. See the list of La Motte’s publications included in this volume for further information about these and other articles.
25. The organization was founded in June 1912. Annie M. Brainard, Evolution of Public Health Nursing (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1922), 337–38.
26. James Bosley to Mrs. Ernest Amory Codman [Katherine Codman], Sept. 21, 1911. All correspondence about this position is in the Instructive District Nursing Association of Boston Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University (hereafter BU).
27. Elizabeth King Elliott to Katherine Codman [Sept. 1911], BU; Mary Lent to Katherine Codman, Sept. 14, 1911, BU; and Lillian D. Wald to Katherine Codman, Sept. 23, 1911, BU.
28. Ellen N. La Motte to Katherine Codman, Sept. 26, 1911, and Oct. 3, 1911, BU.
29. “Sipped Tea; Talked Suffrage,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 11, 1910, 7; “Suffrage Talks in Parlors,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 15, 1910, 8; “Why Women Want Votes,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 16, 1910, 12; and “For Cleaner Streets,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 30, 1910, 8.
30. “ ‘Give us Votes!’ The Cry,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 17, 1910, 9.
31. “Says Politics Sways Courts,” Baltimore Sun, October 28, 1910, 14.
32. “She Flays the Tariff,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 9, 1910, 9.
33. Gertrude W. Peabody to Katherine Codman, Sept. 8, 1911, BU; “Suffragists Are Active,” Baltimore Sun, June 1, 1910, 8; “Says Politics Sways Courts,” 14; and “The Just Government League of Maryland,” New Voter 1, no. 5 (Jan. 16, 1911): 39.
34. “Suffragists Address Socialists,” Baltimore Sun, Nov. 20, 1911, 12.
35. La Motte to Amy Wesselhoeft von Erdberg, Dec. 19, 1911, Correspondence to Amy Wesselhoeft von Erdberg, Ellen N. La Motte files, JHMI. In 2013 a series of sixteen letters La Motte sent to Amy Wesselhoeft von Erdberg, between December 1911 and August 1916, was donated to the Johns Hopkins’ Chesney Medical Archives. For a discussion of the letters see Alice Kelly, “The American Friends.” Following the convention established in “American Friends,” Amy Wesselhoeft von Erdberg is hereafter referred to as Wesselhoeft.
36. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Dec. 19, 1911.
37. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Dec. 19, 1911, and Dec. 23, 1911, JHMI.
38. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 20, 1912, JHMI.
39. “News Notes,” Johns Hopkins Nursing Alumnae Magazine 5, no. 3 (Aug. 1906): 140; and La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Nov. 22, 1913, JHMI.
40. Mary E. Lent and Ellen N. La Motte, “The Present Status of Tuberculosis Work among the Poor,” Maryland Medical Journal 52 (April 1909): 147–60.
41. “Suffragists Address Socialists,” 12.
42. “Miss Lent under Knife,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 15, 1913, 14; and “Miss La Motte under Knife,” Baltimore Sun, July 21, 1912, 12.
43. Mary Goodwillie to Katherine Codman, Sept. 12, 1911, BU; and La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Dec. 23, 1911.
44. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 20, 1912.
45. “For Votes for Tax-Paying Women,” Frederick (MD) Post, Feb. 16, 1912, 4; and La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 20, 1912.
46. “March Like Men,” Baltimore Sun, June 29, 1912, 20; “1,000 Suffragettes Parade,” New York Times, June 29, 1912, 2; and “Suffragette Parade Will Outshine All,” Jackson (MS) Daily News, June 27, 1912, 1.
47. “Miss La Motte under Knife,” 12; and “News Notes,” Johns Hopkins Alumnae Magazine 11, no. 2 (June 1912): 79.
48. It is unclear to what extent she participated in the long march. “News Notes,” Johns Hopkins Alumnae Magazine 12, no. 2 (July 1913): 97; and “To Rest in Baltimore Feb. 27,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 21, 1913, 5.
49. “Miss La Motte Plans to Nurse Militancy,” Baltimore Sun, June 15, 1913, part 4, 8; “News Notes,” Johns Hopkins Alumnae Magazine 12, no. 2 (July 1913): 96; “Nurse to Join Militants. Hospital Chief Leaves Baltimore for Thick of Fray,” Houston Post, June 8, 1913, 1; and “Nurse Will Fight with Suffragettes,” Oakland Tribune, June 8, 1913, 18.
50. “Miss La Motte Plans to Nurse Militancy,” part 4, 8.
51. “Miss La Motte Plans to Nurse Militancy,” part 4, 8.
52. “Miss La Motte Plans to Nurse Militancy,” part 4, 8; and “Bombs for Miss La Motte,” Baltimore Sun, June 24, 1913, 6.
53. “Ellen La Motte on London’s Suffragette Problems,” Baltimore Sun, June 20, 1913, part 4, 1.
54. Ellen N. La Motte, “While Britain Prays, Her Militants Sing Their Hymns of War,” Baltimore Sun, July 27, 1913, part 3, 1.
55. Josephine Grasett, “Attacks Ellen La Motte on Her London Letter,” Baltimore Sun, Aug. 3, 1913, part 3, 1; part 4, 1.
56. Mary Richardson, letter to the editor, Baltimore Sun, Aug. 29, 1913, 6; and La Motte, “While Britain Prays,” part 3, 1.
57. See the list of La Motte’s publications in this volume for information about the six articles.
58. Ellen N. La Motte, “Wherein Miss La Motte Forces Man to Assume Silly Position,” Baltimore Sun, August 31, 1913, part 3, 5.
59. Ellen N. La Motte, “Ellen La Motte Insulted on Crowded London Street,” Baltimore Sun,” Sept. 28, 1913, part 3, 2.
60. La Motte to Alfred I. duPont, Jan. 22, 1919, Alfred I. duPont Papers, Special Collections, Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia (hereafter WLU).
61. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Oct. 31, 1913, JHMI.
62. La Motte to Christabel Pankhurst, Oct. 19, 1913, Manuscript Division, British Library. La Motte also mentions Pankhurst in her Oct. 31, 1913, letter to Wesselhoeft.
63. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Dec. 25, 1913, JHMI.
64. Howard A. Kelly diary, Feb. 6, 1914, Howard A. Kelly Collection, JHMI; and La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 2, 1914, JHMI.
65. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Oct. 31, 1913,
66. Ellen N. La Motte, The Tuberculosis Nurse: Her Function and Her Qualifications (New York: Putnam, 1915), 283–84.
67. “Books and Magazines,” Harrisburg (PA) Telegraph, Dec. 16, 1914, 8. This column appeared prior to the book’s publication.
68. M. E. Cameron, “Book Reviews,” American Journal of Nursing 15, no. 10 (July 1915): 893.
69. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, April 11, 1914, JHMI.
70. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, April 11, 1914, and May 6, 1914, JHMI.
71. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, April 29, 1915, JHMI.
72. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, June 11, 1914, and May 6, 1914, JHMI.
73. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, June 11, 1914.
74. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, June 24, 1914, JHMI.
75. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, June 11, 1914, and June 24, 1914.
76. “Miss La Motte Off for War,” Baltimore Sun, Oct. 24, 1914, 8.
77. She departed New York on October 24, 1914, and started work at the hospital on November 7, 1914.
78. The essay is included in this volume.
79. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 14, 1915, and April 29, 1915, JHMI; and “Work Too Easy in Paris,” Baltimore Sun, July 11, 1915, 4.
80. Ellen N. La Motte, Peking Dust (New York: Century, 1919), 42; and La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 14, 1915.
81. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Feb. 28, 1916, JHMI.
82. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 14, 1915.
83. “Notes Dictated by Margaret Crane-Lillie Gildea,” Sept. 1978, Crane and Lillie Family Papers, Research Center, Chicago History Museum (hereafter CHM); Thomas L. Chadbourne, The Autobiography of Thomas L. Chadbourne (New York: Oceana Publications, 1985), 33–34, 59, 228; and “One Marriage as the Result of Two Divorces,” Leavenworth (KS) Times, Dec. 4, 1906, 3.
84. Robert S. Nelson, “The Art Collecting of Emily Crane Chadbourne and the Absence of Byzantine Art in Chicago,” in To Inspire and Instruct: A History of Medieval Art in Midwestern Museums, ed. Christina Nielsen (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), 132–48; Anna Gruetzner Robins, “ ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’: A Checklist of Exhibits,” Burlington Magazine 152, no. 1293 (Dec. 2010): 783; and Andrew Martinez, “A Mixed Reception for Modernism: The 1913 Armory Show at the Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 19, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 40.
85. Chadbourne donated the works between 1918 and 1957. Nelson, “Art Collecting of Emily Crane Chadbourne,” 132.
86. From an article, “London Social Leader Revisits Former Home,” reprinted in Kate Crane Gartz, The Parlor Provocateur (Pasadena, CA: Mary Craig Sinclair, 1923), 25.
87. From a letter dated March 9, 1912, quoted in Mary Prentice Lillie Barrows, “Frances Crane Lillie: A Memoir,” an unpublished and undated manuscript, Wheeling Historical Society and Museum, Wheeling, Illinois, 97.
88. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 20, 1912.
89. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, March 14, 1915.
90. For more about Lillie, see Barrows, “Frances Crane Lillie.”
91. For more about Crane Gartz, see Parlor Provocateur; Upton Sinclair, “We Get Arrested a Little,” Liberator 7, no. 63 (July 1923): 20.
92. Barrows, “Frances Crane Lillie,” 118, 124.
93. “Notes Dictated by Margaret Crane-Lillie Gildea,” CHM.
94. DuPont to La Motte, Oct. 3, 1930; La Motte to duPont, June 24, 1932; and duPont to La Motte, Dec. 24, 1934, all in WLU.
95. “Of Vermont Interest in Washington,” Burlington Free Press, March 12, 1932, 2.
96. Lea M. Williams, for example, uses both phrases. Williams, “Ellen N. La Motte,” 86n137; and Lea M. Williams, “La Motte, Ellen Newbold,” American National Biography Online, April 2014, http://
97. “Notes Dictated by Margaret Crane-Lillie Gildea,” CHM; Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. Carl Van Vechten (New York: Random House, 1972), 149.
98. The novelette was originally intended to be published during World War I, but it first appeared in 1951, in Envoy: An Irish Review of Literature and Art. Gertrude Stein, Reflection on the Atomic Bomb, ed. Robert Bartlett Haas (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1974), 16–30; and Edward Burns, ed. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913–1946 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986), 1:808.
99. Gertrude Stein, Useful Knowledge (1928; Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1988), 88–89.
100. La Motte to Stein, Aug. 7, 1925, and June 15, 1925, YU.
101. La Motte’s postscript, Chadbourne to Stein, Feb. 14, 1934; and La Motte to Stein, Dec. 20, 1934, YU. Edward Burns, Ulla E. Dydo, and William Rice, eds., The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 344; and Burns, Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1:408.
102. La Motte to Alice B. Toklas, July 28, 1946, YU.
103. During the war, she was known by her married name, Mary Borden-Turner.
104. For more information about the hospital, see this volume’s introduction, under the heading, “Ellen N. La Motte and Other Nurse Writers.”
105. Mortimer, Green Tent, 56–57; and “Hôpital Mobile No. 1,” 232.
106. The essay, published in November 1915, is included in this volume.
107. Chadbourne to Stein, June 28 [1915], YU.
108. Chadbourne to Stein, Aug. 4, 1915, YU.
109. Stein, Selected Writings, 160.
110. Chadbourne to Stein, September 3 [1915], YU.
111. Chadbourne to Stein, October 15 [1915], YU.
112. Chadbourne to Stein, Dec. 19 [1915], YU; and Mary Lent to Alfred I. duPont, Feb. 3, 1916, Alfred I. duPont Office Files, Correspondence 1916, “Lent, Mary E.” file, Nemours Estate, Wilmington, Delaware (hereafter Nemours).
113. Lent to duPont, Feb. 3, 1916, and Feb. 12, 1916, Nemours.
114. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Feb. 28, 1916.
115. She applied on Oct. 11, 1915. Roll 0224-Certificates, Sept. 28, 1914, to Oct. 14, 1914, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
116. Chadbourne to Stein, Feb. 20, 1916, and March 16 [1916], YU.
117. The essay is included in this volume.
118. Stein, Selected Writings, 149–50.
119. Gerard Colby, Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (New York: Open Road Media, 2014), chap. 8; and John K. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1935), 231.
120. Lent to duPont, Feb. 21, 1916, Nemours.
121. A copy of the boat’s manifest is among the shipping records of New York’s Ellis Island.
122. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Aug. 17, 1916, JHMI.
123. La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Aug. 17, 1916.
124. Chadbourne to Stein, Aug. 4, 1915, YU; and La Motte to Wesselhoeft, Aug. 17, 1916.
125. Department of State Emergency Passport Applications for 1916, vol. 11 and 12, RG 59, National Archives, Washington, DC.
126. Chadbourne to Stein, Sept. 1, 1916, and Sept. 30, 1916, YU; La Motte to Stein, Sept. 10, 1916, YU; Ellen N. La Motte, The Opium Monopoly (New York: Macmillan, 1920), xi; and La Motte, Peking Dust, 4, 8.
127. Ellen La Motte, “The Ruins of Angkor,” Harper’s Magazine, Feb. 1920, 365–77.
128. La Motte, Peking Dust, 13, 77.
129. La Motte, Peking Dust, 24, 200–201.
130. La Motte, Opium Monopoly, ix–xi.
131. Stein, Selected Writings, 160.
132. “ ‘The Backwash of War,’ by Ellen La Motte,” 110.
133. DuPont to La Motte, Feb. 8, 1918, WLU.
134. DuPont to La Motte, Feb. 8, 1918.
135. For a more detailed discussion of this topic, see the introduction to this volume, under the heading, “Publication, Reception, and Censorship of The Backwash of War.”
136. La Motte to duPont, June 30, 1918; Aug. 1, 1918; and Dec. 4, 1918, WLU.
137. La Motte to duPont, Jan. 22, 1919, WLU.
138. Ellen N. La Motte, Civilization: Tales of the Orient (New York: Doran, 1919), 185.
139. “Books and Their Writers,” Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, Aug., 25, 1919, 4; and “Short Stories and Novels,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1919, 35.
140. In April 1920, she applied for a new passport and indicated that she planned to depart in early June and visit the three countries, as well as France. Department of State Passport Applications, Roll 1159; April 16 1920–April 17 1920; National Archives, Washington, DC.
141. Ellen N. La Motte, “The Christmas Boat,” Harper’s Monthly, March 1930, 494.
142. See this volume’s list of La Motte’s publications for information about these articles.
143. Her visit was reported in publications ranging from the China Monthly Review to the Baltimore Sun, which ran the news under the subheadline “Last Visitor Hopkins Nurse,” Jan. 24, 1922, 9.
144. La Motte to duPont, April 6, 1924, WLU.
145. Establishment of Two Federal Narcotic Farms: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary on H.R. 12781, 70th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1928), 86.
146. La Motte to duPont, Dec. 2, 1928, WLU.
147. The article, dated June 3, 1928, is reprinted in Establishment of Two Federal Narcotic Farms, 224–26.
148. “Reviews of the New Books and News of the Bookmen,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 23, 1925, 11.
149. Robert S. Nelson, Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004), 169; and Ellen N. La Motte, “A Coronation in Abyssinia,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1931, 576.
150. “Three Widows” was published in March 1931, and “A Coronation in Abyssinia” was published in April 1931.
151. Evelyn Waugh, Remote People (London: Duckworth, 1931), 44.
152. DuPont to La Motte, Nov. 25, 1931, WLU.
153. Chadbourne to Stein, Feb. 14, 1934, YU.
154. “Refuse to Prosecute Embezzler of $450,000,” Logansport (IN) Pharos-Tribune, Dec. 11, 1937, 9; “Notes Dictated by Margaret Crane-Lillie Gildea.”
155. La Motte to duPont, April 13, 1932, WLU.
156. Ellen Newbold La Motte, “Why I Am Going to Vote for Roosevelt,” San Antonio Light, Oct. 25, 1932, 5A.
157. DuPont to La Motte, April 11, 1933, La Motte, Ellen N., file, Nemours; and La Motte to duPont, Jan. 7, 1934, WLU.
158. La Motte’s postscript, Chadbourne to Stein, Feb. 14, 1934; La Motte to duPont, Jan. 29, 1934, WLU; duPont to La Motte, Feb. 17, 1934, WLU. Apparently, the article for Fortune, which La Motte described in her letter to duPont on January 29 and he mentioned in his reply on February 17, was never published.
159. La Motte to duPont, June 30, 1934, and July 14, 1934; and duPont to La Motte, Oct. 6, 1934, all in WLU.
160. La Motte to Stein, Jan. 20, 1936, YU.
161. “Stone Ridge,” Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman, July 13, 1937, 4.
162. La Motte appears in the photo of the ceremonial signing event, included in this volume.
163. Jane Eads, “Washington Daybook,” St. Cloud [MN] Times, Dec. 7, 1951, 4.
164. “Notes Dictated by Margaret Crane-Lillie Gildea,” CHM; Patricia Watson, Crane: 150 Years Together (Stamford, CT: Crane, 2005), 74–77.
165. “Notes Dictated by Margaret Crane-Lillie Gildea,” CHM.
166. “Notes Dictated by Margaret Crane-Lillie Gildea,” CHM; and La Motte to Katherine Hasbrouck, March 21, 1956, in a private collection.