5
Life with Nick (1932-1939)

The following letter from Ed Anderson is perhaps the only one that survives of the probably dozens he wrote to Barbara while she was living in New York. (And, as far as I know, none of her letters to him remains, though I’d love to be proved wrong.) It’s undated, but “Soon, it will be spring” suggests February or March 1932.

Finding much of anything about Anderson has proved tricky. Crew lists suggest that he was born in the U.S.A. in about 1904, his middle initial was probably “S.”, and he was about six feet tall. I don’t even know what “Ed” was short for—Edward? Edmund? Edgar? Edwin?

 

Foss Pier.

660 W. Ewing St. [Seattle]

Dearest:

When I suggested that visit, I should have added that it be entirely on your own terms. It did not occur to me that it was necessary to say so. Evidently I am something of a stranger to you after all. The reason I asked a definite answer was because I knew it would be either extremely hard or else quite easy and simple to answer it. Under the circumstances I think one can be forgiven a little curiosity. How else could I learn if this reacquaintance of ours is prompted by sincerity or just a whimsical moodiness; a sort of nostalgic doldrum that sends the mind foraging amongst the old curios up in the attic. Those outmoded articles that are set aside when new interests, and new friends cause them to appear old and boresome by contrast.

Your reply to my direct request has strengthened a vague uneasy feeling that your letters are perhaps urged by some exigency of the moment. I have a feeling that all is not quite as it should be. What it is, I haven’t an idea, but this is the impression your words give me. When you say that “the inconvenience and little pain” that would be caused by your leaving now, is also to be considered. I have uneasy forebodings of another problem. Pain and problems; what absurd things to waste one’s life over; I’ve long ago cast such matters adrift, and am much happier for having done so. Thus you find me. If coming to visit me is to cause pain + inconvenience, and fill you with apprehensive thoughts of a ‘stranger,’ why then perish the whole idea. Things don’t seem the same; when you were in Pasadena and I in Honolulu I did not pause a moment, but came without the least thought for inconvenience. I wouldn’t do it now, and so can perhaps sympathize with your unwillingness to do so.

The reason I suggested it be soon, was due to the fact that I have not any definite plans for the summer. I can go North on the Holmes, or I can get a job ashore (at least I was offered one). I rather fancy taking a trip in the cutter this summer, but I’m a little bit afraid to play truant too much, gets to be a habit, and besides I’ll have all next fall and winter even if I do go North. Anyway it’s time for me to decide, and in all probability I’ll go North. I can use the money. Were I able to talk to you I know it would all seem very simple, but writing letters hasn’t ever gotten us anywhere. Of patience, I’ve a very small store; in fact it’s a virtue entirely lost when practiced with women, as you once convinced me. Patience seems to spell insincerity in a woman’s eyes. In fact I think women may even spell it as impotence.

So you see how I feel Bar. I wonder if you’ll understand. Friendship and love are not mere words, yet that is about all we’ve been to each other; just words and ideas, and I’m a bit tired of just that. That is the reason I am not going to commence a long protracted correspondence with you. Nothing has yet been ‘clarified’ that way. All it ever did was to impose restrictions on me, I was so in love with you, that I forgot there were other women. How very quaint and old-fashioned Bar.

So let’s be friends if that’s what you think best, and if you want to come out here, then please come, and if you don’t want to, don’t, but for heaven’s sake don’t use me for psychic experimentation, and try studying my reactions to one impulse rather than another.

About my “ridiculous prejudice, about women wearing pants.” That’s the trouble with a lot of women, confound it. They want to wear the pants. But really! my prejudice is purely aesthetic. Most women are a bit knock-kneed, which is quite as it should be I suppose. Most women also have broad hips, and that’s perfectly alright too. Now let’s pause and reflect, what an incongruous sight, an otherwise perfect woman broad-hipped, a narrow head, etc., garbed in a pair of trousers designed for men; with the cunningest little pair of high-heeled shoes pecking timidly from the bottoms of the self-conscious pants. I cannot repress a groan. When women wear pants the hands are embarrassed, they never find their way into the pockets, as hands should do when idle. Pants on women usually fit too tight for that anyway; I’ve seen women in trousers carrying a purse; that would seem to solve the matter of the hands, but what good are the pockets in that case. Perhaps a pair of pants without the pockets and buttoned down the sides would seem more appropriate. A Mrs. K. wife of the captain of the Commodore came aboard once, resplendent in starchy, well pressed ill-fitting white ducks. Captain B. was away, so I invited her to wait in the cabin. She glanced at the proffered chair with suspicion. My sympathetic glance must have reassured her. She managed to be seated without any mortifying sound of fabric parting. Even the most genial of hosts could hardly have suggested removing the offending strides for the sake of the visitor’s comfort.

Soon, it will be spring. I must then start to work in earnest. I’ve had a shockingly idle, lazy, pleasant winter. Now I’m sort of rubbing the sleep from my eyes. It seems hardly true that I’m awake and writing to you. This letter is rather long, isn’t it? I think Bar that we are making a mistake in writing these letters. I know I can’t help feeling a little helpless before you, even in a letter. How you really feel, I am not sure. I think I’ll steer my own course, and if you think the future may hold something for you & I together, then please don’t hesitate. I’d do anything for you, yet I’m not going to press the point in the face of any reluctance, at least not by letter.

One little word of your last letter offends me dreadfully: “Experimental”!! it has a vivisectional sound and a grubby researchy odor. Makes me think of guinea-pigs and pathologists. Shocking of you to use it. I know what you meant, and I say come or do as you wish; let it be a visit, a reunion, an adventure, or whatever you please, but please don’t call it an experiment. I’m very far from perfect and if you seek faults, they’re mighty easy to find. If you haven’t found the perfect or at least ideal mate these past years, don’t be deluded that I may be that nonexistent specimen. I’m not. So here we are, right where we started, and until you make up your mind, I shall bid you a cordial adieu.

 

E. A.

 

In 1932 the Appalachian Trail was in its infancy. It hadn’t been cut nor marked for most of its 2000+ miles between Katahdin and Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia. (The first documented “thru-hike” was in 1948 by Earl Schaffer, although there’s an unconfirmed report of a party of Boy Scouts from the Bronx who may have finished it in 1936.)

It surprises me that Barbara hadn’t already told Alice about the three new friends she’d made the previous summer in Vermont. One of them—Nickerson Rogers (1908-1980), the “amiable lad with occasional unsuspected depths”—had just graduated from Dartmouth. Occasionally Nick traveled down from his parents’ home in Brookline, Massachusetts, to visit Barbara over the winter and spring of 1931-32.

Eugene F. Saxton was editor-in-chief at Harper & Brothers.

 

Saturday

March 1932

Dear A.D.R.:

You really needn’t feel so ashamed of yourself in the matter of correspondence, since you surely didn’t owe me much of a letter, judging by my last two or three!

You are right when you surmise that I have been rushed and busy—more so than ever, since the beginning of 1932. My life is getting almost crowded, in fact. The job, of course, takes eight hours a day straight out, and everything else has to be jammed into the fringes. Since I can’t satisfy mind, soul, or body with the job, I have to jam into the fringes almost as much as another person would put into an entire day.

You want TALK. Well, I’ll try my best, and as there are a few more news items now than usual, maybe I can fill the bill a bit.

First, Helen’s book is getting to that thrilling point. She has received proof of the illustrations—great illustrations they are, looking like very clever woodcuts—and Macmillan has done a surprisingly good job of the reproductions. But since she will doubtless tell you all about this herself, maybe I’d better concentrate on other things.

The more important thing I have to contribute is that Lost Island creepeth onward, in spite of God and the Devil (represented by various personages, of course!). In fact, I’ve gotten to that delectable point where there remains only about a chapter and a half—or possibly two chapters and a half—to be written. That will complete the first draft. Then to sail into a good thorough revision, editing, chopping, piecing, cross-hatching, weaving, repairing, tearing, rending, boiling, steaming, and general subjection to energy. I think I can have it in Mr. Saxton’s hands—willing or unwilling hands—by June 1 at the latest. That’s what I’m aiming for, anyhow. And I still have faith in the old thing, which is quite a point, you know.

When all this energy is accomplished, I’m going to bat out about three copies, of which two will be passed around among a few individuals. You are going to be one of the fortunate (?) recipients. I shall want your criticism—I mean, if you are willing, and want to give it—rigorous and stern and unsparing. There will be four or five other people, who will probably all contradict each other. Then it will fall to my lot to Think It Over, and do some more pounding. Among these selected critics, I’m going to pick out at least two entirely impersonal ones. For instance, a Professor of English at Dartmouth whom I encountered last summer.

After that job is all completely finished, and the black spring binder reposes under Mr. Saxton’s nose, I’m going to sail into another job I have in mind—not such a lovely job, but an even more important one, because my entire existence rests upon it. It will be the introductory material for another book—a book about an adventure I think I shall have this summer. Woods and mountains. A. D. R., I’m going to tell you about it, and you must rise to the occasion, because I’m terrifically excited over the whole thing.

I’ve gotten together a party of four congenial brave souls—of which I am one (I hope)—and we may add two more members. Then, starting about the middle of July, we’re going to Maine—Ktaadn—Thoreau’s country—and from there we’re going down the Appalachian trail, two thousand miles, Maine to Georgia, camping out, and carrying upon our sturdy backs the necessities of life. It will take between three and four months, and be the greatest release imaginable.

Well, I’ve even higher ambitions than that. I’m not just going to take money out of the bank, leaving a hole, to indulge my pleasure. I’m going to struggle to make the thing pay for itself, and the only way I know how to do that is to write about it. And as I said I’ve some ideas for the introductory materials which can be put into words before ever the adventure takes place. And that’s what I’m going to do after Lost Island is carefully finished. All four of us are very much together on this. We’re going to cooperate to the nth degree, and I think that among us all we’ll succeed. You couldn’t imagine a more congenial party. We are getting together this spring for house-parties at intervals, during which we paw over hundreds of maps, draw up provision lists, talk, laugh, anticipate, and in general have a grand time.

The party consists of an amiable lad with occasional unsuspected depths whom I met last summer when H. and I were living in the Vermont cabin; a pal of his, who has a remarkably good head on young shoulders; and a girl who is really a grand scout, with whom I get along quite beautifully. In fact, we all get along with each other beautifully. No friction anywhere, as far as we have been able to discover. There may be two others added to the Grand Expedition, as I said; and we would like of course to have an elderly leader, than whom no finer could be imagined than Meservey of Hanover—only I’m afraid Meservey of Hanover is tied up.

Well, that’s the general idea. It may crash completely. Nothing is certain about it. But we’re all hoping, and pulling together. We’re all slightly rebels against civilization, and we want to go out into the woods and sweat honestly and shiver honestly and satisfy our souls by looking at mountains, smelling pine trees, and feeling the sky and the earth.

We went up to Bear Mountain this last week-end, for the Appalachian Trail strikes through there, and we explored ten or fifteen miles of that section of it. It gave us a tremendous thrill. I can’t tell you what it meant to our world-weary souls to have our feet on that narrow, bumpy, winding footpath that goes clear from Maine to Georgia, marked out by little silver monograms on the trees, which change to yellow-painted arrows over rocks and ledges. Over Easter we’re all gathering the clan again, for another expedition somewhere. These short trips help us to get personally adjusted and strengthen the congeniality still more. It also helps to give us an idea of what we need by way of food and clothes, and also puts us in training, more or less.

It will be a terrific trip, of course. There will be times when we’ll probably be cold and wet and uncomfortable and grumpy. But we’re ready for that—almost covet it in fact. Pitting one’s strength and personality against the wilds—the greatest sort of opportunity on earth.... Well, there it is. My room is plastered with trail maps even now!

All this time I haven’t so much as mentioned A., have I? Well, I’ve had him in the back of my mind—in reserve, so to speak. Luckily, the C. S. Holmes job holds. I guess he’ll be going north again next summer—the third time. There really isn’t anything else to do, with conditions as they are all over the world, especially along the waterfront. His life is odd and stern—verging on tragic, at times. He feels that now and then, and has down-spells, during which I am hard put to it to be cheerful and cheering. I am pretty sure, though, that next fall we shall actually be together, and discuss everything from moths to meteors, including money and mice and merriment and misery and—but that almost exhausts the m’s I can think of at this Moment. That discussion will doubtless decide a good many points about this universe and the nature thereof. Right now he is a little sad, and alternates between letters about the futility of life with humorous epistles about politics in Seattle and other things.

As for being eighteen—well, I don’t think there is anything especially momentous about that. It doesn’t thrill me a bit.

Your mention of spring makes my mouth water. There hasn’t been much around these parts. In fact, Bear Mountain was covered with snow last week-end, and there was driving mist and it was pretty dern cold. However, one can’t stop the seasons, so I have hopes.

I’m so glad to hear the good news about Elizabeth. What an ordeal—or rather, what a series of ordeals—she has plowed through. Phoebe is apparently still toeing the mark, with her nose much to the grindstone. Darn these grindstones—I mean, damn them. And so B. R. is actually going west in the summer—actually, this time? He west, A. north, I Appalachian Trail. Funny world, isn’t it?

You know, I’m ashamed of myself, but it took me several seconds of puzzle to figure out “Miller.” Then I remembered. Wonderful creature that he was! Supercilious, spruce, disdainful creature!

Thanks for letting me see the two pictures of you and P. in the desert. I return them herewith. They are sweet.

TALK? Will these pages do at all? If it’s egocentric talk you were looking for, I should think maybe this would be a slight over-dose! On the other hand, you are so devoted and the lapse has been so long, that maybe it will be endurable this time. You know, I’m still hoping to see you sometime. I have a philosophy of life—one which has been evolving for many years, but which has suffered interruptions and repressions and smashes. Now it has taken root again— or, rather, I realize that its roots are not dead, but just beginning to be powerful. If it grows and thrives and survives the vile climate of trouble and difficulty and set-back, it may take me to almost any part of the old earth where I want to go. What is this philosophy, you ask? Well, I’m testing it warily, leaning on it cautiously, exploring it tenderly, thinking about it profoundly; and if I come to the conclusion that it’s any good, I’ll tell you sometime. Not until it has proved itself a little, though. I’ve lost faith in a number of things—or, rather, I’ve withdrawn from them the crushing weight of my faith. My philosophy aims now to stand upright. Tree-like....

I expect the next year to decide a number of important points. Beginning this summer. I think this summer will tell me a good deal. Being in the woods, standing on mountain-peaks—time to meditate and dream and get a perspective on life. There is nothing more soul-cleansing than to stand on a mountain, when you are inclined to feel hopelessly sure that the world is 99 100ths mankind, and see that vast tracts of it are blankets of forest and trees, after all! Mountains affect inward matters in the same way—reassure one about inward things in the same way as they do the visible things. So I expect to find out several things during the Appalachian Trail expedition—assuming and praying that it works.

Then, coming back from that to this—the complete contrast, the need for instantaneous adaption, and the fresh perspective on this— these things are also going to tell me a good deal. I mean, I shall be ready then to make certain decisions, about philosophy and about life.

Then I’ll remedy the inner workings of the universe! My love to you and all the Russell clan.

 

Yours,

B.

 

150 Claremont Avenue

New York

May 23, 1932

Dear A.D.R.:

There has been a terrific long gulf, hasn’t there? It is hard, when all’s said and done, to keep in touch with people who live thousands of miles away, no matter how much you love them. I do want ever so much to know the news—whether anything is wrong, or anything right, or whatever there is and has been.

Spring! That means leaves and fragrances and warm winds and—an Arctic-bound schooner.

The only really exciting piece of news is that this summer I and three very good genial friends are going to tramp down the Appalachian Trail, which runs over mountains clear from Maine to Georgia, a matter of twelve or fifteen hundred miles. Maybe I told you about that before, though. I can’t seem to remember—it’s all been so deathly long, anyhow.

Helen’s book comes out on June 7; mine is in second draft form at last, and I hope to thrust it bodily under Mr. Saxton’s nose sometime in June. It will be interesting to watch the reaction. It may turn straight up in the air—the nose, I mean.

I have decided that there are a good many big and fundamental things wrong with the world, and that nothing can be done about it; furthermore, that one must revolve quietly along with the world instead of trying vainly to buck it. If you compromise enough—to outward appearances, at least—and if you fully realize what a messy world it is, and are reconciled to certain facts, such as continual change and permanence in nothing—why, then you can have a surprisingly good time. That’s what I’ve discovered anyway. I’m having a better time of it these days than I’ve had for ages—almost approaching gaiety sometimes, in fact.

But I confess to being a bit worried about you and yours. Things seemed so rather shaky and precarious for you anyway—always have, in fact. Do let me know if there’s anything wrong. Not that I could do anything. I may be seeing you before the year is up. Quien sabe? It’s a mysterious life.

I’m going to Delaware Water Gap over this coming Memorial Day week-end—at least, I think I am. In which event I’ll convey your greetings to the general countryside. Oh, the beauty of that country in spring! How is spring out your way now?

My love to everyone, but specially to you.

 

Your

Barbara

 

150 Claremont Avenue

New York

May 31, 1932

Dear ADR:

I’m relieved about You, at least, through your last grand letter, although the news about B.R. is anything but good, certainly. I don’t know what to say about that, so I won’t say anything.

And there WAS some good news, wasn’t there? It sounds to me as if the little gods were smiling for a change on the desert. I’m quite thrilled over that. Also, it’s good—damn good—to hear that P. is nearly through. What happens after that? “And Life Goes On,” I suppose. Funny old life, isn’t it? A very devil of a complex circular affair.

The book—this time I mean mine—has suddenly sprung a disconsolate discovery. I find, much to my disgust and up-noseishness, that I shall have to write another chapter to round out the thing properly. My nose is still so much turned up that I can’t get after the chapter yet. Of all exasperating things to find out after you’ve written a book—to think it’s All Done, and then to see some untucked frazzles hanging out the tail end! However, that’s but a temporary set-back. I expect to have the whole thing done before I go away for the summer. In fact, I MUST. I’ll try to get a copy to you, and I want your opinion including all the hard slams you like.

As for the AT (Appalachian Trail) we considered taking along “a second-hand burro,” as one of the boys put it. But after all, there will not be any very long stretches of total wilderness, and we can easily carry enough on our own sturdy backs to eke out during those stretches. After all, the east coast—even its mountains—are pretty well civilized in spots—too much so, in fact. The best parts will be the extreme north and extreme south—that is, the Maine and New Hampshire woods, and the North Carolina country to Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia. We were discussing plans just this weekend, when three of the party got together “Beside an Open Fireplace,” to talk.

Yes, Anderson went north again. He is now first mate of the schooner, and rather happy about that, of course. He is doing awfully well, considering everything. I MAY see him next fall—but don’t you breathe a syllable about that, even to yourself! I’m keeping it a very strict secret from myself. If you know what I mean. I mean there are some things in this world that don’t happen if you so much as admit that they’re possible. Perhaps they sometimes happen if you keep your eyes tight shut and don’t think at all.

Oh, I was in the woods yesterday. I’m sure of it, because I’ve a sunburn. It was beautiful. Light green leaves with gold light breaking through them; wild geraniums, birds singing, a lake to swim in, grand companionship—the wild open spaces—but principally sunlight. I know from that taste of it that I couldn’t by any hook or crook stay here very much longer.

Next month I’m going to spend a short week-end in Hanover with some old friends—that will mean another taste of the out-of-doors. And it won’t be so very long after that before we’re off on the grand old trail! One of the boys sent me a couple of the AT trail markers the other day. I keep one of them on top of my office typewriter, where I can see it all the time. It cheers my soul.

Well, now I’ve got to turn to and tuck the shirt-tails of my story into its pants. Do you see what I mean?

GOOD luck to you—oh, Lord, good luck to everybody! God help us—not whelp us any more!

 

Yours for sunshine,

B.

 

The following is from the June 1932 issue of Young Wings: The Magazine of the Boys’ and Girls’ Own Book Club, published by the Junior Literary Guild.

 

“I’ve Got to Go to Sea Again!”

by Barbara Follett

Everyone who has ever gone off on an adventure knows that friends and acquaintances, especially aunts, have a way of firing difficult questions at you. “What made you want to go in the first place?” “Yes, but where did the idea come from?” (As if anybody knows where an idea comes from!) They want to understand the secret workings of your mind. They are interested in the “psychology” of the thing, and you feel like a rather small beetle under the microscope. If the adventure happens to be a nautical one, you say something about “the call of the deep, you know,” and they appear to be satisfied.

But I did not go to sea the first time because of the call of the deep. That call is very real, and very potent, but in my case it came later. I went to sea for what I considered a simple and logical reason: I wanted to be a pirate. (These matters can’t be explained to elderly aunts, so please keep it a secret!)

That idea quickly smashed, of course. I saw that evil-looking knives were no longer clenched between teeth, and that large gold earrings and red bandannas had gone out of style. Mutiny did not seem to be brewing. It was after this peaceful discovery that something else crept into the picture, much harder to explain or describe. I shan’t try to do so. I shall be content with merely calling it the glamor of the sea. Joseph Conrad is the only writer I know who was ever able to put this into words, as you know if you have read any of his books.

Magic Portholes is the tale of my second sea adventure. It was an adventure of islands and ships and stars and laughter; of tropic winds, sleepy island harbors, pathways of moonlight over the waves, vibrant dolphins in the wake, and . . . you know, I’ve got to go to sea again—oh, any day now! Perhaps I’ll meet some of you there.

 

Frederic Taber Cooper (1864-1937) was a writer, editor, and teacher of Latin at Columbia and New York Universities. His books include The Craftsmanship of Writing (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1911).

 

Old Lyme, Connecticut

June 29th, 1932

Dear Miss Follett,

Alas, for all my fine promises about returning the MS of your experimental final chapter within forty-eight hours! I am really feeling very contrite. But the simple truth is that after reading the chapter I mistrusted my own judgment and wanted the whole thing to simmer in my subconscious for a while. And then, after a few days I went down and compared notes with Ethel Kelley—as I dare say she has told you before now—and after that I just serenely and definitely knew that my first instinctive reaction had been the right one. Over the week-end I was camping out in the wilds of New Jersey, where apparently there were no post offices, any more than there were on your LOST ISLAND. Up here in Lyme, it is simpler—just a walk of a mile and a quarter, through blistering heat—and luckily I thrive on heat.

No, whatever you do, don’t use that new final chapter. It is written in a wholly different mood, and even the tone of it, even Jane’s attitude towards her specific problem and toward life in general is altered. It seemed to me as I read that some one else, and not Barbara Follett, had been taking a hand in things and giving her version and not yours. What it all means, if I am at all correct, is that you have already, in these weeks or months since you first drafted Lost Island, grown away from your former attitude and can’t quite get back. We agreed the other day that there is no such thing as finality in human stories; but your original ending was as near a definite, logical rounding out as you can hope for. And at least the work was all of one piece. It had a unity in structure and in style. And my advice is to keep it that way.

Now, if some publisher wants a supplemental chapter, I don’t say it would be a mistake to show the new chapter to him. The book as a whole would remain the refreshingly lovely thing that it is, either with or without the addition. Only I shall always feel that it is more artistic just as it stands.

I shall be down in the city again probably some time in July, and shall let you know. Perhaps you would give me a chance to see you again and talk further about what you have done in the way of a final revision. I have enjoyed our various brief contacts—and if I am likely to be of any service, you will please me very much by freely telling me just how I could aid.

 

Cordially yours,

Frederic Taber Cooper

 

Magic Portholes was published in June and reviews were good. Here are excerpts from three.

 

New York Times Book Review, July 3, 1932

“Mother and Daughter Go A-Voyaging,” by Anne T. Eaton

[…] Here, however, is a travel book of a novel kind, for the author and her daughter, the two “shipmates” who are responsible for “Magic Portholes,” have put into its pages so much of their personality, so much of their own zest for adventure, so much of their love for the sea and for strange new sights, that readers from 12 on will have a delighted feeling of making the voyage with them.

Barbara Follett was the author of “The House Without Windows” between the ages of 9 and 12; when she was 13 she wrote “The Voyage of the Norman D.” an account of her first trip in a schooner. Though Mrs Follett is the chronicler of “Magic Portholes,” the book is Barbara’s as much as it is hers. Reading it, one feels that it is Barbara’s thoughts and Barbara’s feelings that the writer expresses, even more than her own. It is a young person’s book, the older of the two shipmates giving the opportunity of self-expression to the younger one in its pages, just as she did when she made possible the voyage itself. [...]

 

New York Herald Tribune Books, Sunday, July 10, 1932.

“Girls and Boys With an Adventurous Spirit,” by May Lamberton Becker

If alternative titles were still in vogue the one for Mrs. Follett’s book might truthfully read: “Or, Bringing Up Mother.” This being an enterprise forever in fashion, however fashions of doing it may change, it will be seen that the book has two chances in its favor for an audience larger than usual: it may be read, with entertainment and enlightenment, by daughters and by mothers—I don’t know which will enjoy it more—and it may last over into the future long enough to let the next rising generation of girls know how this one met the age-old urge to run away to sea.

For on its first page fourteen-year-old Barbara—who had already, in her comparatively distant past, sailed with the Norman D and written a book about it—comes down with another attack of salt-water fever. Running away to sea, however, has always meant more than ships or salt water. It was once the great American gesture of the youth movement. Boys could do it—and in New England so many did that not to have a seafaring uncle in the family was to be noticeably out of step—but with girls it was only one of those serio-comic threats whose very unlikelihood shows the hopelessness of revolt. But in those days it never occurred to a girl to take her mother along. It did so to Barbara. It is a wonderful thing for a mother to find that her daughter really wants her to go along—anywhere.

[...] The pictures are striking black-and-whites by Amstrong Sperry, who made the brilliant color end-papers and jacket; altogether a work to catch the eye of any age.

 

The New York Amsterdam News, founded in 1909 and still in operation, is a newspaper with a largely African-American readership.

 

New York Amsterdam News, July 27, 1932.

An interesting and vivid account of a year’s adventure by a mother who is persuaded by her 14-year-old daughter to pack up and go to the sea. These two shipmates, as they like to be known, leave New York for the West Indies with very little luggage, a slim purse and a desire to see and go as much and as far as possible. In the words of Jerry, the amiable Barbadian bell boy, the idea was “travel light— an’ go far!” The Folletts do just that before their year of wandering comes to an end.

[…] Their first stop out of New York harbor was Barbados, with its tall native women, carrying on erect heads huge wicker baskets containing everything from crimson colored fish to brown and white chickens, still alive. In a rhythmic voice they advertise the wares for sale, in much the same manner, we imagine, as the Crabman in “Porgy.” These shipmates in adventuring mood trek to North Point, the land’s end of the island, where the Caribbean and the Atlantic come together. The journey from St. Andrews, the last stop of the train to the sea, is a hot, tiresome one, through a miniature desert. On their way back to the railroad they stop at a little shop and to their utter amazement find that it is run by one Mrs. Lucas, who had lived in Harlem some years before.

[…] “Magic Portholes” may be read with rare pleasure. The style is so simple that the book should prove enjoyable to youngsters with a yen for seagoing and exploring and delight even mother and dad.

 

While the reviews appeared, Barbara and Nick began their Appalachian Trail adventure (their two friends didn’t join them after all). After camping for two weeks on an island in Squam Lake, New Hampshire—letting Barbara strengthen her city muscles by swimming and paddling—they began their journey on top of Katahdin in mid-July, walked and canoed through Maine, hiked over the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and ended their approximately 600-mile journey down Vermont’s Long Trail, reaching the Massachusetts border sometime around Hallowe’en.

“Howie” is Howard Dillistin Crosse (1911-1982), a friend of Nick’s. He would go on to become president of the New York Bankers Association.

Harper & Brothers passed on Lost Island, which would remain unpublished until I transcribed and posted it on my website, Farksolia, in March 2012. I’ve also posted Travels without a Donkey, Barbara’s long account of the Maine section of their journey.

Despite Barbara’s offer, Helen didn’t join them over the Presidential Range.

 

Oquossoc, Maine

Maine State Fish Hatchery No. 7 (on the grounds of!)

Date (God knows) [August 1932]

Dear H:

You are a brick; you took it like a grand sport, and I sure appreciate it. Thanks from the heart.

I am convinced that it was not a mistake. How long it will last I’ve no way of knowing, but I know that for the time being I’m healthier, browner, stronger, and happier than for years; it is the swellest kind of a life: all out of doors, warm and cold, wet and dry, sunshine and moonlight, fir boughs and sleep from sunset till dawn; lakes and rivers and hills, trails and wild country and long white roads; the feeling of utter independence—all one’s belongings on one’s back, and not too heavy at that—God! what a lot of junk civilization involves!

N. is swell—a grand out-of-doors person. We get along quite beautifully in our—what shall I say?—semi-Platonic way. It’s the best thing one could imagine, and I frankly don’t know of another male creature who could do as well. We intend more or less to stick together as long as it’s good. We haven’t any but the vaguest plans as to how a “living” is to be wrested from the world, but we’re going to try various things, including maybe housekeeping in a cave in Tennessee this winter!

The AT is not marked out at all across Maine; consequently we’ve been having a swell time plunging across the countryside more or less on our own—following rivers via old tote roads, etc. Quite exciting and wild. If you are interested in details of the trip to date (geographically) Howie has maps which N. has been sending to him. These are marked up, and in some detail, including places where we had lunch or stopped for a swim or panned for gold without finding any, etc.

Our home is N.’s little 6-pound tent, but we don’t set it up every night by any means. Sometimes, when it looks as if the weather could be counted on, we just spread out on our fir boughs under the open sky.

I wish you could see N. these days. He tells me that he too is healthier and happier than ever. When on the march he wears only a pair of shorts, and is brown as an Indian—maybe a picturesque-looking red kerchief around his neck. He has about a month of beard, which would look like the devil on anybody else; and I cut his hair, but you can’t kill his looks, that’s all there is to it! He’s getting in pretty good training now, too—a bit thinner and more muscle and stands straighter. Eyes sparkle as ever. Always good natured.

Your letter reached me at Rangeley today. The old canoe we bought for twenty bucks at Moosehead Lake should be waiting for us here— we’re going to paddle across these big lakes. Moosehead Lake, by the way, is about the finest looking big stretch of water I’ve ever seen. We hung about it for a week, camping on grand little islands, etc. Then we took our canoe, the Skeleton, down the Kennebec about ten miles—real white water, and we knowing nothing of river canoeing! Judging by the rocks we hit, you’d think that canoe would be matchwood! Well, she was a battered old veteran Oldtown—we broke a few more of her ribs, but otherwise she’s O.K.! A marvellous craft!

I had a letter from Saxton. Oh, hell! Does anything ever satisfy him? Well, here’s the letter. I don’t see what I can do about it now, except suggest that if you feel like it you might trundle the MS to Alfred K. Also, old man Cooper had a lead or two. He could be looked up via Ethel. But don’t go to wearing yourself out over it, because I doubt if it’s worth it.

Barbara at camp, 1932

 

Now listen here, old girl—I’ve a real honest-to-God proposition. You were saying a while back that you were hankering for some mountains in September. N. and I both want you very much to join us at Pinkham Notch and go over the Presidentials with us—a matter of five or six days over glorious mountains during the best time of year. How does that sound? We’ll hit Pinkham about September 12—of course there’s no knowing for sure, but if we depart radically from that schedule I’ll let you know. We want you to be waiting for us at the A.M.C. hut there, where you could stay cheap (something like $2.85 per day, bunk and meals). The procedure is as follows. You carry a light pack (not more than 15 or 20 pounds) including your bedding, clothes, and perhaps a little food. The only expense outside of carfare and board at the hut would be a very small amount for your share of the food going over. As for a pack: if you can’t borrow one from Harley or somebody, don’t worry: we’ll rig you up. As for bedding: three of our* [in margin: *This means your—we have only our own sleeping bags] army blankets would be good—with some blanket pins to make yourself snug. As for clothes: you can have my pants, or you could doubtless get by with an old skirt (how about your yellow jersey one, and mine added to it?) and a sweater, I should think; and my green leather jacket would be good. You want quite a bit of warmth, of course, but also something light to wear while on the go—an old silk blouse, or an ordinary workman’s blue shirt (59 cents!) would be good. I suggest a pair of shorts. They are simply grand for climbing—freedom of action, you know! Having once worn ’em, I wouldn’t wear anything else. You can doubtless get ’em at L and T, although theirs are a little too stylish.

My costume now consists (except when I wear shorts) of ordinary dungaree pants ($1.00) and a blue shirt. As I said before, many people take me for a boy. N. cut my hair off quite short. You’d think it would look like hell, but it’s really an improvement. It stands fluffily on ends, and curls all over the place. It too is having a taste of freedom! And it is wonderfully comfortable. It hardly ever needs to be combed.

But back to the main issue. As regards your footgear: high sneakers would be O.K. if they’re good heavy ones. You can wear mine (they might fit you with plenty of socks). They’re in my bureau drawer.

We’ll take care of all the food question, etc.

Let us know—and do come. It would be grand. We’ll take it all at comfortable speed and have a great time—some good talks, some good laughs, some great old hills. Write me Care of General Delivery, Gorham, New Hampshire. I’m looking forward to it, and so is N. I should think it could all be settled in that one letter. Then I’ll write you again, just to report on progress, schedule, etc., because by the time we get to Gorham we shall know quite definitely when we shall hit Pinkham. N. says that it would be still better to wire you from Gorham, because you should start for Pinkham promptly then.

Here is the procedure getting to Pinkham Notch. The station you want is Gorham, N. H., which N. thinks you hit in White River and Littleton—but check that. Write to Joe Dodge, Pinkham Notch, Gorham, N. H., the hour of arriving, and someone from the hut will meet you. Simple enough, n’est-ce pas? Do come!

As I said before, it is very grand of you to take it all so well. I realize that it messes things up for you terribly, and am sad about that; still, we all have to follow the best thing that we know. Wouldn’t some mountains help a little?

 

Love always,

B.

 

Barbara wrote a second letter to her mother from the same mountaintop that she and her father stayed on for several nights in 1925—where she saw frost feathers for the first time. Once again Helen declined Barbara’s offer to join them.

The “letter from the far West” was probably from her father. She enclosed a letter to him when she wrote to Alice on October 4th.

 

Moosilauke Summit Camp

Dartmouth Outing Club

October 2, 1932

Dear H:

We’ve been up here several days in the Winter Cabin, nursing a bum toe which I acquired. Yesterday—believe it or not—all the little scrub trees were encased in snow, and there were frost feathers everywhere, some six inches long. Washington and the Franconias gleamed like Alps in the sun. There has been all sorts of weather— from specklessly clear days to mist so thick that you could cut it with a knife—we had to take axes and chop holes in it when we went outdoors!

There have been a few interesting people up here, too. Yesterday, for instance, we had a delightful little Englishman (cartographer for the American Geographic). He knows the West Indies, and the Canadian National boats, and he says “Jolly old boat”—it was good to hear, that phrase! We spent most of the time shouting duets and choruses out of Gilbert and Sullivan.

In a few days now we shall proceed to Hanover, and then to the so-called “Long Trail” in Vermont, which should be lovely, though probably not exciting, country. It should be fairly easy going, and there are shelters at convenient intervals. We’re going to stick to this game until it gets too damnably cold—then we may beat it (hitch-hiking) to Tennessee or somewhere. We don’t know for sure when the weather will get too much for us, but I expect not until late October or November. Anyway, the point is: how would you like to join us along the Vermont trail? We’d like to have you ever so, if you won’t mind the cold—it will be cold, of course, some of the time. You will want to take plenty of warm clothes and blankets. One trouble is, we wouldn’t be able to equip you with a pack on this stretch. That would have been possible if you had joined us at Pinkham, but not here. Either borrow, buy, or steal one.

Here are the practical details: write me Care of General Delivery (“hold until called for”) at Hanover (address envelope to Nick, not me: that’s the way we’re handling the mail now). In that letter let me know definitely whether you can get away sometime after the middle of October for about a week or ten days. When I have your answer I’ll write you from Hanover just where, and when, and how, you’re to meet us—probably at East Clarendon, Vt. How does this sound? It won’t be so utterly thrilling as the Whites would have been, but it ought to be fun; we can have some talks and laughs and stories. You can imagine that we’ve got some stories by now!

Did I tell you that I had a letter from the far West? The unrealest thing I ever saw. It simply doesn’t exist.

N. wears well. I don’t know anybody else in the world (at least, of the male sex) whom I would want to be thrown together with so closely for so long through so many variegated adventures. We haven’t even scrapped at all, which is rather remarkable, considering how constantly and intimately we’ve been together since July. I’ve never had such an enjoyable and satisfactory relation with anyone. We’re going to chuck it, clean, when we feel like it, but now it promises to hold out ad infinitum, and it’s grand.

Don’t lose your head or get scared when you see N: the beard is now three months old. The effect is a combination of prophet, Russian, pirate, and genius. Howie reports that friend Casseres has a mustache now—one that “would do credit to a Polish street-sweeper.” I should like to see it.

How’s everything down your way? Sabra, radio, etc.? Did the Sperry brat arrive O.K.? My love to them. Had an awfully nice note from Miss Carney—but Christ! am I glad I’m not there.

N. sends his best. We really hope a get-together can be worked out, though we thought it swell that you stuck to the job so heroically. More power to ye!

 

Love,

B.

 

Moosilauke Summit Camp

Dartmouth Outing Club

October 4, 1932

Dearest ADR:

I have so much catching up to do that I’m not even going to try! Someday, though, I’ll tell you the things that have been happening— the curious, joyous upheavals my life has undergone, and the gipsylike ways I’ve been living, and so on.

Right now my object is the transmissal of the enclosed letter to W. F. (which I should be glad to have you read if you care to). It may be that you have no idea whatever of his whereabouts. In that case, merely destroy it, as circumstances are not opportune for writing to him through Helen. If you can get the letter to him in any way, and if he answers it, I want the answer to come through you, as I don’t want just yet to give him the address which I’ll give you at the end of this.

All this sounds terribly complicated and mysterious, doesn’t it? But you see, I’ve jumped many hurdles of late, and want to be cautious. I’ve jumped the whole structure of what life was before: I’ve jumped the job, jumped my love, jumped parental dependence, jumped civilization—made a pretty clean break—and am happier than for years and years. I’ve a new, and I think a better, structure of life, though time alone can tell that!

How are you and yours? I long to know, fear to ask. It has been so long since we’ve been in touch! Write me a word at this address, and then I’ll tell more about everything.

 

Love as ever,

Barbara

 

Address mail to: Mr. Nick Rogers

℅ H. D. Crosse

834 DeGraw Avenue

Newark, N. J.

(not me—this will nevertheless be quite private)

 

Barbara must also have written to Anderson while on Moosilauke: his reply follows.

Richard Charnock’s Prænomina, or, The Etymology of the Principal Christian Names of Great Britain and Ireland (1882) gives the following definition for Auna: “... this female name is thought to be the same as Aine (pronounced nearly ‘awna’), still given, or given till very recently, by Irish-speaking people to female children in the south and west of Ireland, and which he thinks is connected with the old Irish moon-goddess, commonly Anglicised to Anna or Anne ... the Erse word ‘aine’ signifies ‘music, melody, harmony’.”

 

Box 65

Oct 21 1932

Bar, you wonderful woman, you can’t imagine how I feel today. You think I am pained, or unhappy, then know that I feel quite the opposite. Now I know that everything is real that you are not after all, an ordinary person. Now I know that, had I but dared tell it to you, you would not have laughed at my own ambition, a ‘madder’ one than yours.

I must tell you now. I hate domesticity. I’m afraid of domestic people. I hate daily routine, and dollars and cents calculations; I wanted, more than I want you, to escape all that; the idea was breeding when I met you first. Perhaps you can guess what form my escape would take. I am going to have my own ship and go in my own way to do the things I choose. That is why I am working, for that, and not for the grubby comforts of domestic security. Before I met you, the idea was in a singular tense, then I had wild fancies that you might be a kindred spirit, and understand, but yet I was afraid to put words to it, and when you became efficient and psychological and, as I feared, ordinary, it was still harder to bring it to light. I then hoped that I could convert you to my faith after we came together. Yet it seems that you are as strong an advocate as myself, so therefore I feel as happy as if you had really known, and understood. We shall never grow old now Bar. This talk of love, that word love, what do we mean by it, not what you thought I meant. Poor abused word, with the weight of the whole world bearing down upon it. Happiness, contentment, security, bah, give me freedom. Why do you think I wanted to be definite and frank; because I wanted to feel free, and feel I was myself. Now I do, and I am happier than I’ve ever been before. You terrified me with talk of clothes, and dinners, and responsibilities, that is why I failed to make you love me. We two should have been more careful with that word love. It meant more than either of us realized. Now I know why I loved you, and why I still do, and even if you never see me again, I shall not cease to love you. I do not feel jealous towards your new companion, though I don’t deny that my greatest wish is to have you myself. He can probably take better care of you than I. Yet you are my woman even if you try to deny it. You are life, and adventure itself, and you’re completely wasted on anything else. Perhaps I shall meet you someday, maybe you’ll come for a cruise.

There’ll be no need for talking it over. (In fact what has talk done so far.) Would you come, or would [you] discuss it. Eepersip tired of the forest, and went to the sea, you know. So you must write to me, so that I may find you. Now you really are worthwhile, and to think I grieved over your changing.

Listen Bar, this is terrifically important to me. I want you. A year ago I was doubtful. Do you dare or care to take a real chance, on a real adventure. Think Bar, roll the words on your tongue. Marquesas, San Lucia, or what sounds best. Dolphins under the bow, flying fish, and the changing sky and water. Better than a cave perhaps. There’ll be books to read too, when the mood takes you. Dungarees, and bare-feet, or shoes and skirts, whatever the mood asks. High latitudes or low, wooded shores or coral reefs, nature smiling warm, or nature riant, fearful. This has been my dream, this is why I have wanted you. This is why my woman was so treasured. I do not say ‘please,’ or ‘do.’ If you’re the one, you’ll know, if not, then solitude has no fears for me. The best years of life together. The end painless. No ‘thou shalls.’ Away from the pale ledger-minds; only the task of living to face.

You see, Auna, I’m myself now, you’ve lifted a tremendous load from my mind, now we need not be self-conscious or fearful of painfulness. You think a lot of ‘Dartmouth’ don’t you? Are you sure? Come Bar, tell me, is he everything. Does he deserve all of such a one as you, can I not lay a fair claim to you. Do you think I’m working for its own sake, and saving for its own sake. Open your eyes. Life is not as transparent as you think, nor perhaps as obscure as you may have fancied. Let me rescue you now, from that cave. Step back a few steps, and let’s start afresh, the way we should have started. Let not the dream be too easy of accomplishment, let it be not only today’s but also tomorrow’s. I do not say you may tire, but what of him, may he not. With me it might be harder, but more lasting, I know. Dungarees or skirts. You’re the woman. You’re my woman, but woman-like you’re wondering about happiness, and so you deny me, thinking of the ‘best happiness.’ Put on your cap and coat and come West. Have a talk with me. If D’s real, he’ll understand, if he won’t have it, then be a rebel and come on general principles, and if you don’t like our prospects I’ll see you safely returned, even to him. Surely you can take a month off.

I’ll wire you the fare; the cave won’t disappear in the meantime, nor will he. Try it. Try him, try me. Don’t you think it would be a good adventure. Just to see, and know.

 

I want you,

A.

 

[undated, but early-mid November 1932]

℅ Howard Crosse

834 DeGraw Avenue

Newark, New Jersey

Dearest ADR:

You wanted to hear from me promptly—right away, return air mail and all that. But, you see, in the rather odd kind of life I’m living right now, such things can’t be done. When your letter was forwarded to me, I was—well, where was I, anyway? Williamstown Mass., I guess—just in from a week’s stretch of Green Mountains. The next day we pulled out, hitch-hiking. I’m in New York now, at the apartment, but only till about tomorrow. Then I light out again.

Now I’m in Brookline, Mass., clearing up a few earthly details before sailing for a little island off the coast of Spain—if you can believe that! No wonder you are puzzled. The reason I didn’t try to go into any sort of detail in my first letter was that I wanted—well, to sort of feel around first, if you see what I mean.

However, before I go any further with this, I want to tell you how tremendously I was pleased with your news, which is at least as exciting as mine, only in a different way. That is, the good heart sings for you. Oh, how I hope nothing will go wrong this time! And then to hear that E. and M. have had no more devastating catastrophes, and that Phoebe is fairly happy, and that you yourself are surviving so well, head above water and all.

I don’t enjoy going into terrific detail about myself, by mail. It seems so rather brazen and cold-blooded. And I’ve been writing fewer letters than ever. But to put it briefly, New York irked me past endurance, and I had an opportunity to quit it all. I thought about it pretty hard for a while, and then decided that in spite of certain complications, “obligations,” and whatnot, I would chase them to the four winds and take my chance. So I did. I and a comrade escaped to the Maine woods (Katahdin, in fact) and then started off tramping south down the footpath that runs intermittently all the way from Maine to Georgia—the Appalachian Trail. It was a tremendous summer. There were mountains and forests, rivers and fields, sunlight and starlight, fir boughs and birds singing. But it was not only a summer. It will go on.

Those are the brief facts—which, of course, are not a satisfactory offering. You see how hopeless it is to give you a good idea of what it’s all about, and why. Besides, it’s all based on such subtle intangible things—except the boat to Spain, which is fairly tangible. I’ve tossed a lot of things to the winds, of course. I mean, I’m gradually getting to be a fairly “shady” character, but it’s worth it. When it isn’t worth it any more, I’ll change it some how. There’s always a way out, if you have courage—there was even a way out of New York!

Sometime my devious paths will lead me to you. I know that. Then there can be a real discussion, and real understanding. Right now I’m living in kind of a golden ethereal mist, and I haven’t typewritten for a long time, either! So I’m handicapped, more or less. Besides, the things I want to say are too new. They are still seething and surging around in my heart, but they haven’t been able yet to take their shape and wings and fly into the sun. It’s all pretty experimental, anyway. This I know—life is better than I thought. It can continue being good, if one only knows how. I’m trying to learn. I am learning, a little.

Helen has both backed me up and condemned me. Of course, it’s hard on her. A very subtle and complex question of ethics is involved—whether ’twere better etc. I’ve found this out—you can’t arrange your life so that everyone is satisfied, including yourself— unless you are a very uninteresting person. And the break had to come. I’m not claiming I’m right (how foolish it is for anyone ever to claim that he’s right about anything!), and God knows I may end up in an awful mess. Still, all I can do is follow the best I know—take the greenest and most verdurous trail that I can see. If it ends in a desert or a swamp, maybe I can go back and try another one. And that makes a cosmic adventure of if all.

We sail within a couple of weeks, probably. This was quite unexpected and out of the blue—we meant to go to Florida for the winter! I think you would like this person who has been constantly with me since the first of July, and intermittently for about a year before that.

Anyway, maybe I’ll drop you a few lines from Majorca or Minorca or somewhere!

With much love, and the best of luck to you.

 

Yours,

Barbara

 

Thanks for transmitting that letter. I’m glad I wrote it, whether he answers or not. Above address holds good.

 

Nov. 23 1932

Dearest Barbara:

I could not help, a prayer. I love you. I love you. Write, please write to me. The long storm has hurt too much.

Forgive the way I wrote it, it was much earlier; want can exist on hope, for me awhile; if you’ll but say a little “That it doesn’t make you unhappy because I want you” “That it doesn’t spoil a new something” If I would but really know, I would rest, no matter what. But this dreadful thought that we hurt for no reason other than lack of understanding is unbearable. Don’t you see, Dear. I love you, therefore you may trust me.

A word of hope, please, or a word of reason why there’s none; you didn’t go from me, you drifted away. If no one took you, drift back; if someone did. Tell me. You’ve been so vague. You hurt. There’s something of you within me that you left behind. A true word would remove it, and leave me in peace, content that you were happier. If there’s a ray of your affection left, don’t try to kill it, for I love you.

 

A.

 

Anderson included a poem with his letter:

A Prayer to Virodine

Oh Virodine from you I pray a miracle

Teach her please a want expressed in me

Send back Auna of the darksome moody eyes

She was not flame, but spread, cool and warm, a russet charm

To match her autumn tinted hair

It seems not fair that I should lose her now

For I have learned of much to give

Sympathy, and knowing wisdom besides just love

Dear Virodine if I may humbly bow before Auna’s shrine

Will you not bid her stir and murmur,

“I only left and had strange dreams awhile.”

She needs so little, yet so much.

We should have a rare exchange

A sort which does not take to keep a captive to oneself

But roams in freedom, seeing, feeling, understanding, understood.

If I’m a spirit, twas her creation, she must not push her work aside.

The cry is need;

To recognize, that here as well an earthly glamour has been too long denied, and threats to turn on spirit and devour.

The counter-point of detail all around, dins in my ears.

Drowns out a grander symphony that yet too softly murmurs.

She must return;

Don’t let her say a “coward” plea

There’s nothing now we could not face, no nothing

She must come to me.

If she was sad, so was I.

If she lost something, so did I.

If something died, twas in us both.

Twas only sorry tact kept us apart.

She says she does not want a nest on ground: And nor do I.

All cluttered round with routine.

Perhaps it was your wish that we should learn thus so

That when together we’d evade more lacerating hurt

The petty gods now strewn away, in absurd posture, facing bolstered up.

From which I turn to gaze at One

I turn to you and ask Auna back.

It is not time for her to go to poppy isle.

Till I am ready too

Oh! place a word of hope, and promise on her reluctant lips.

Some little thing to live upon, or I shall starve.

Bring her to life for me, by sacrificing ‘all’ the wrong in ‘past.’

 

In late November or early December, Barbara and Nick sailed from New York to Gibraltar aboard the S. S. Rex, an Italian luxury steamer. Also on board was Nick’s aunt, who had her own stateroom in first class, while Barbara and Nick were in third. After exploring Gibraltar and Morocco, the couple took a bus up the eastern Spanish coast to Malaga, where they looked for good walking opportunities. They decided on the island of Mallorca instead, arriving there shortly before Christmas.

Unfortunately, the following letter to Helen is I think the earliest European correspondence from Barbara that survives in the archive.

Farksolia has two of the three stories Barbara was working on while on Mallorca: Mothballs in the Moon, which takes place near Lakes of the Clouds on the Presidential Range, and Rocks, “about me going all over Ktaadn alone.”

 

Palma, March 20, 1933

Dear H:

You sound as if you were having a terrific whirl, what with radio, articles, lectures, etc. It must have its moment of being fun, even if it is built on air, so to speak. In fact, isn’t it sometimes still more fun because it’s air—about me, I mean. If people knew how thoroughly lousy—but let that pass!

Sorry you misunderstood me about coming over here. I didn’t mean I didn’t want to see you—hell, no—I only meant that I thought you’d be disappointed in this place. It isn’t much, really. And it’s overrun with the wrong sort of tourists. That stuff about it’s being “native,” “unspoiled,” etc., is the sheerest balogney. When such reports are circulated about a place, it’s a sure indication that the place is spoiled, I guess.

Do come across this summer, if you can. It would be swell. What would you do with S.? Our plans are uncertain as ever, but right now it looks as though we’d be getting out of here inside of a month. The Meserveys are in the Alps—we’re considering paying them a brief visit, spending a month crossing France, partly afoot; then we want to get into Germany and tramp about nomadically through all the best parts of the country. That sort of thing is done there—our sort of thing—whereas in Spain they look at you a little askance if you walk a mile.

However, we’ve had a good time here. Met some odd people, had some amusing adventures. You have no idea how much fun it is to be married. I mean, when you really aren’t. You get let into a great deal more. There’s a lot of scandal and intrigue here. We pose as symbolizing solid respectability in the middle of a whirlpool of intrigue! We have agreed that the first requisite of a happy marriage is not to be married. N. introduces me as Mrs. R. with uncanny naturalness. Thoroughly delightful. We get along better now even than when we were over there, as we get to know each other more and more. N. still can make me laugh before breakfast, and he still labors under the pleasant illusion that I am beautiful.

For a week we worked—earned our meals and twenty-five pesetas besides. It was in a pension run (or limped, rather) by two English females—really the dumbest and most frightful people I ever ran across. I swept rooms, peeled potatoes, washed thousands of plates, N. polished shoes, lit fires, chopped wood, mopped floors, waited on table. It was thoroughly a scream. We laughed ourselves ill.

I can speak tolerable Spanish now, when the conversation is about simple little things. I’m reading Don Quijote in the original, and getting a great kick out of it. I had no idea what an amusing tale of woe it is. I’m also studying German grammar—although not very hard yet. I have read some good books, such as Of Human Bondage and Jacob Wasserman’s two-volume thing called The World’s Illusion—a strange, gruesome, spectacular work. Ever hear of it?

We made an excellent arrangement with a young Mallorquin which allows us the use of his grand new business typewriter in exchange for English conversation. So I have got two stories typed. They don’t look bad, especially Mothballs in the Moon. I also dictated to N. one day a fairly complete outline for a story about me going all over Ktaadn alone. I’ll try to get at that soon.

That’s about the sum total of my intellectual activities—except, of course, a prodigious amount of pondering and philosophizing. There’s a lot to ponder about. Life, and the best way or ways of living it. We’ll probably never agree about that, you and I; and I, for all my wondering, arrive nowhere definite; and yet I think I have evolved a curious kind of wisdom that seems to serve. No code of morals, no rules of conduct, nothing whatever—no definite faith in anything— sheer black atheism—and yet I get along swimmingly. Instead of trying to pin myself to something, and sinking when it sinks, I have preferred to swim. When I’m tired, I float on my back and stare at the sky. I’ll be all right that way until sometime an octopus devours me!

As for physical activities. I have swum once—very hastily—sea’s damn cold still; I have danced a little, walked quite a bit. Presently, for the weather is getting good now, we’re going to strike out and tramp round about this island—and then we’re leaving it. There is getting to be lots of sun now. I strip to it when I can, and am raising a gorgeous crop of freckles—honeys, they are—the biggest and blackest yet. Old Nick remains true as steel—says they’re swell and he likes ’em and I’m very beautiful. A man like that is about the best thing a feller can have.

We have moved from the Mallorquin pension where we were. We’re now sharing a little house a few miles outside of Palma, with a rather interesting young chap, a Southerner, with a delicious drawl, boatfuls of nigger yarns and stories from the Kentucky mountains. He has good black eyes and an expressive face. Has been leading a rather dissipated life here, with several women and too much drink. The doctor told him to quit it, so he’s on the water-wagon now and living alone in the house, until we come along.

Regards to “Bug” Clarke. Amusing chap. By the way, he promised to write to me, and hasn’t a bit. Ask him if he’s shocked at me, or what? Tell him I might even answer.

Howie Crosse’s mother died—did you know? Heart. Good for him, in a way; he is free to grow up now and be a man.

No, I don’t expect I shall be popping in on you unexpectedly. We don’t expect to come back till fall anyway, and maybe not then, if we can get a job—in Germany, for instance. I’ve noticed that the feller who publishes the Tauchnitz Editions (English and American classics—very cheap and good paper editions) badly needs a proof reader, and shall look into possibilities.

Do try to work it so you can join me in Germany this summer. Keep me in touch with your plans, and I’ll do the same. When do you think you could get away? There would be one or two conditions, of course. About the details of living, etc. But I’m quite sure there’d be no difficulty over that.

We would go roughing it, but not too rough, with our knapsacks and in pants, visiting the mountain huts, which sound altogether too good to be true. We’ll sun ourselves, and swim, and pick berries, and sing songs, and forget woes and worries.

I guess that about exhausts the things to be said. From now on, I shall try to write a little oftener and fuller. I kind of think there’s going to be more to say from now on. For so many weeks we did little but enjoy café life with our books and friends. The only excitement was when we would get just slightly lit up by a few glasses of excellent sherry or Moscatel, and go dancing.

I adore wine, anyway!

 

Love,

B.

 

Sabra’s accident at school resulted in a broken leg. The “Ktaadn thing” was Rocks, mentioned above.

The “Herald article” refers to the Boston Sunday Herald of March 5, 1933. Helen was interviewed on the radio program Herald Headliners on February 28, and a week later the Herald printed a photo of the cast and a story: Mrs. Follett and Barbara Run off to Sea.

I don’t think the photo of Barbara running on the beach with a wolfhound has survived, sadly.

 

Grand Hotel Alhambra

Palma de Mallorca

3 April 1933

Dearest H:

We are both terribly sorry to hear about S. Poor little kid—what will she do for two months? It seems quite cataclysmic. I do hope the school will help you out with the expense. How about that brick floor, for instance—should a gym have a floor like that?

Of course bring her over this summer. You mustn’t think we don’t want to see you; I never meant to convey that. Bring her over; we’ll all get together somewhere, and we’ll both do anything we can to be helpful. If I thought I could be of any real help at home, I’d consider coming; but seems to me that would only complicate matters.

The weather here is much better now. I am getting color all over me, and have been swimming quite a bit. N. is helping me learn the “Crawl.” As you know, I am as at home in the water as any fish; yet I have never learned to swim properly. I am also developing wind and endurance and muscle; and straightening my shoulders. I am trying pretty hard, and they’re almost all right now. All this is N.’s doing.

This morning your letter came. Today we are leaving, with our pack and a rented blanket, for a walking and swimming trip round the island. Sun and sea and open country. Muscles hardening. Moonlight. Good flowers everywhere. Will tell you about it when we get back.

I have actually started the Ktaadn thing. Semi-humorous in places, partly philosophical, adventurous, with characters in it and quite a bit of discussion about Ktaadn and New England in general. Fairly long, but doubtless cuttable to any desired length. By the way, it would be amusing to have a copy of the Horn Book, if you can conveniently send it, also the Herald article sounds amusing. I’d like a copy; but don’t send the whole newspaper, for we are trying to cut out bulk!

Good for “Bug” Clarke! Sounds like a brick. A humorous brick, too, which is the best kind imaginable.

Did I tell you N. and I worked for a week? Earned two dollars (Spanish wages) plus our meals. In a pension which two foolish English women are trying to run. We swept floors, washed dishes, shined shoes, made beds, peeled potatoes, chopped wood, mopped, dusted, lit fires; and at meal-times N. put on a white coat and waited on table, with an incomparable calm, gentleness, and smiling efficiency. He is a wonder. It was a perfect scream.

My Spanish is pretty good now. I can discuss all the ordinary things with a fluency that fairly ripples at times. When it comes to the theory of relativity, however, I prefer to talk English. I love the Sp. language. It has a good sound. The verbs are conjugated very much as in Latin—surprisingly alike. Latin—my little knowledge of it has been an invaluable help. I get along much better in all languages than persons who haven’t studied Latin. The trouble is, here in Mallorca they don’t speak real Sp., although they understand it a little. They speak a lousy-sounding dialect.

Now do, for goodness sake, get this idea out of your head that we don’t want to see you. We do, and we’ll do all we can to be useful to you. For instance, if you keep us well posted in advance, we’ll try to find places to live cheap wherever you’re going. Our next stop, when we leave here, will be Grenoble, I think, so we can climb an Alp. Or even two Alps.

I have a picture I’m going to send you later—of me in a bathing suit running hard along the very edge of sand by the sea, with good waves in the background, and a marvellous jet-black wolfhound, who belongs to a Spanish soldier, running beside me. One of N.’s best, so far.

Well, I guess that’s all. I’m really awfully sorry about this mishap. You’re spunky, a good sport, a thorough brick. Come on over!

 

Yours,

Bar

[in Nick’s hand]

Love, Nick

 

Had a good letter from Normy.

Have met some awfully good people over here.

 

As Barbara promised, she typed up her shorthand notes about the walking trip on Mallorca and sent them to Helen. They total about 11,500 words. The trip report was not published; nor was No Cobwebs or Ghosts, Barbara’s essay about traveling by sea. I will post both on Farksolia soon.

 

℅ Am. Express Co.

Conquistador 44

Palma de Mallorca

April 13, 1933

Dear Helen:

Your rather depressed-sounding letter was waiting for me when I got back, just yesterday, from ten days’ walking trip around part of the island. And first let me tell you just a little about that, and then I’ll talk about your problems, and possibilities of getting together, and so forth.

I have about thirty pages of pencilled shorthand notes about this walking trip, which I wrote to you as we went along just because I felt like it, with no ulterior motives. But all of a sudden it occurred to me that it might be pretty useful material. Within two or three days I shall have it typed, and it shall go to you, and you will see what you think.

It occurred to me that a long, entertaining letter from me to you might just fill the bill for you at this time. I mean, it would be an answer to all the questions about what I am doing, and why, and what I am getting out of it, and all that. You know: “Dear Mother:” —a letter to her mommy from the good little daughter, and all that. And there really is some pretty amusing stuff in it, as you will see. Would that sort of thing have any commercial possibilities, in connection with your lectures, radio, or a possible article in a newspaper, or something? Can you use it for anything at all? Could there be any money in it? Of course I realize you can’t answer this much till you see the thing itself, but I just want you to be thinking it over a bit, so you’ll be ready for the thing when it comes through presently.

The personnel of the thing could be easily fixed up. This trip could hardly have been taken by me alone. Two girls, or me and Aunt Edith, could by a far stretch of the imagination have taken it. Nick graciously says that he is willing to be a girl for a while in the good cause. But I think the best solution is to make the companion an old and trusted family friend in the late forties or fifties—perhaps an uncle, or something. That would fit in perfectly.

Anyway, you have full editorial powers over the material. Cut it wherever you like, modify it (remember I wrote it simply as a letter to you!), add to it, arrange the personnel any way you please. I feel almost sure you can make something out of it.

If there is a chance of selling it, there will be pictures forth-coming, too, if you say the word. Nick doesn’t know whether he wants to sell any negatives outright, unless he could get a fairly decent price for them, but he would sell the right to reproduce. And, although we haven’t yet seen the pictures from this particular expedition, I feel confident that there will be some pretty good stuff among them.

Anyway, think it over, won’t you?

If you like the material, and the idea seems to go over, I could think about keeping it up—a sort of series of “Dear Mother” letters from foreign countries.

As to Cobwebs and Ghosts, I’ll try to get at that, too. Thanks for the tip.

And now about you.

We’ve got your problems in mind, and we’re going to continue to have them in mind as we go places—thinking a little about cheapness, good places to live in various respects, schools, etc. And I don’t see why, if we keep our heads and act sensibly, we can’t dope out some very good scheme of life for the summer and through next winter. It is certain that you can live almost anywhere in Europe cheaper than in America. France is said to be more expensive than Spain, and Germany more expensive than France, but on the other hand I imagine you can live ridiculously cheap in Germany if you know how. We propose to learn how. I don’t think I’d recommend Spain. What I’ve seen of it isn’t so hot. France or Germany would be better. What I specially yearn for is to spend the winter in the ski country, and learn to ski. An accomplishment I’m ashamed of not having acquired already.

Of course you understand that Nick sticks to me and I stick to Nick. It couldn’t possibly be any other way. The thing would be, for us to keep house for you. We’re awfully good at that, and at marketing economically, and cooking on charcoal stoves, and things like that. Nick would manage a lot of that in his quiet efficient way, and I the rest; you’d never have to put your hand to a dish, or take up a knife to peel a carrot. We’d take care of Sabra, too, of course—at least, I imagine he would do most of that, and I’d help you with your stuff. We’d take it all quite seriously, as a definite, regular job, to be done every day. I’m glad you’re thinking of another book, and I’d be glad to help all I can with it. I know you may say: “It sounds good, but it won’t go through like that.” Well, there is always the possibility that it won’t, but I think there’s a damn good chance if we all go at it cooperatively in the right frame of mind. Let’s try, anyhow. We’ve talked it over a lot in the watches of the night since your letter came, and we think it’s a good scheme, and advantageous to everybody concerned. If you have any alternative scheme, let’s hear it; only don’t try to get me alone because that won’t work. I have to have him, to keep me good.

Well, I guess that’s about all of that. You asked me about my plans. We shall probably be in Palma about a week more, in order to get some typing done—a lot of typing, in fact, while I have this very excellent opportunity. I want to get this Mallorca material off to you (by the by, Mallorca material is said to be more or less in demand), and the Ktaadn thing, too. Cobwebs and Ghosts, maybe. And Nick has some material to be typed, too. After all that is done, we may retire to a sweet place we know up the coast a way, and rest and swim for another week. Or we may not. But in any event, we shan’t be on the island much longer. After that we plan to go up to Barcelona, across the Pyrenees, and maybe drop in on Ellen at Grenoble. Then Germany. But it’s all a little vague as yet, and if you could tell us anything concrete about your plans it would influence ours. I mean, we can still mould our plans any way you like. We really do want to help you out. And we’ll be thinking about it.

Keep your chin up, and don’t let all the questions bother you. This material that’s coming to you ought to serve as a pretty good answer to questions about me.

How’s the busted leg?

 

Love, as ever,

Bar

 

Grand Hotel Alhambra

Palma de Mallorca

28 April 1933

Dear H:

It’s quite definite that we’re leaving here May 3 for Grenoble, where the Meserveys are. If it’s good there, we’ll stay a little while. Our transit visas only allow us a month in France. After that expect to go to Germany. Will keep in touch with you frequently. You’d better not plan to come to Mallorca, though. Try Germany.

Please bring me (I know it’s a nuisance, and I’m sorry, but please do):

(a) Large jar of peanut butter.

(b) A “bra” from Lerner’s—one of those little lacy ones. Size 34.

(c) My Farksoo. It is in a large green box marked “Farksoo.” I don’t need all of it; I think all the important stuff is in one notebook at the top of the box. Look carefully and see if that notebook has the vocabulary in it—a bulky thing, incomplete, partly handwritten. I need Farksoo.

(d) My brown fountain pen, which is—or was—in that old pocket-book.

(e) I’m out of clothes. Bring a couple of things like that green and brown Jersey dress—old things to be worn up.

You’re bringing a trunk, I suppose, especially if you’re bringing Sabra. I think the Maine idea is good for this summer for her—but after that, what?

By the way, there could be a couple of photographs with Rocks. It would be a little clumsy to get hold of them, since Howie Crosse has all the negatives, but I imagine it could be done, if you like. Let me know.

See you sometime, somewhere!

 

As ever,

B.

 

Barcelona

May 4, 1933

Dearest ADR:

Your good letter came yesterday, and needless to say I’m tickled to hear that you aren’t sitting in the fig-tree, that you are all alive and well, and that the Wolf is house broken (Oh, most admirable phrase!)

I am sitting at a little table on the sidewalk, waiting for a train to France, which leaves in an hour and a half. Beside me sit a knapsack and a small suitcase—our total luggage.

You are absolutely right, my dear, in resenting my not having taken you more into confidence. Try to believe that it wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to tell you all about it, as that I was all up in the air myself, not sure just what was happening and not knowing where to start or what to say in any event. It is bewildering to completely change one’s life all in a minute. Do forgive me.

In brief, here is the story: I met this “mysterious figure N. Rogers” summer before last, when H. and I were living in that little cabin in Vermont. Then he showed up again that winter in New York, and we became good friends. He helped me through some trying times. We liked mountains—laid plans for getting away together the following summer. It was with him that I took that trip down the Appalachian Trail through Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It was all so good that I decided to stick to it. In August I wrote Bingham, giving up my job. This—all this—is a continuation of that adventure.

That is very brief. It doesn’t tell you anything about the delicious little island in the middle of a New Hampshire lake that we camped out on for two weeks in a tiny brown tent. It doesn’t say anything about the things we have been doing in Mallorca (which we just left last night), such as living in a cave out on the coast and swimming in magic blue-green water. And it doesn’t say a word about the mysterious figure himself. Well, that’s difficult. A picture may help a little. I just know that I have never “hit it off” so well with anyone or known a more congenial comrade. We’ve been together day and night for upwards of a year now, and no prospects of splitting up. Sometime we’re going out to explore the great North-West; and we’ll come to see you, if you’ll have us.

It all happened like a shot, you see. I was sorry to do this to E. A., but when crises arise things change. Besides, I think that was drawing to a close; and this was obviously right because it was so damn natural. I believe in nature. We have to follow the best thing we know—the thing that is at the time best.

Helen writes that she expects to come over, with Sabra, in June. We shall join up with her somewhere, and I shall help her with another book. As for my book, Lost Island, I haven’t ditched it at all. I finished it about a year ago, and I suppose it is now wearily going the rounds of publishers’ desks under Helen’s guidance. I still think it’s a pretty good book. I haven’t written much since—a little short stuff.

But, writing or no writing, I’ve been living pretty hard, which is what I want to do. Last summer, that tremendous succession of mountains down the backbone of New England. Then, the business of sailing from New York. A rather dull winter in Mallorca, when it rained all the time, and we sat around Spanishly in cafés and read. Then, a good walking trip around part of the island, with a borrowed blanket. Living in a cave, making friends with carabineros (the coast guards—good fellows, all of them), eating with them in their huts, warming ourselves at night around their little fires and learning Spanish from them; swimming along great sweeps of beach, exploring Moorish watch towers about a thousand years old, sailing on several exciting cruises on a small sloop owned by an interesting chap. Now we are bound for France and Germany to tramp some more this summer. We are poor as church mice, of course, but progressively browner and happier as time goes on.

 

Grenoble, May 7

The train arrived. We took about five different ones before we were through, and eventually landed here, under a line of mountains—sharp white peaks, with blue shadows. I imagine we shall be here about a week, then go on afoot over Switzerland and part of Germany.

That’s about all of it.

Thanks for the news about W. F.—not that there is much one could dignify by the name of news! I do want to look him up again sometime—be it Maine or California. That is another of the thousand-odd things we’ll do when we get back. We shall probably establish ourselves in a shack in the woods somewhere and explore from it. I like Civilization less and less.

Your letter was good to have. Do it again when you feel like it! (The same address holds good—we have no other yet.)

Much love to the “family.” I think they’re grand, all of them!

 

Love,

Bar

 

Grenoble, France

May 7 (or 9?), 1933

Dear H:

We arrived here day before yesterday, after having taken five different trains from Barcelona. I can’t talk French worth a damn. I say “Quiero” instead of “je veux,” and “cuanto vale?” instead of “combien.” Sometimes I mix both languages in one sentence; and N. still can’t say “oui” to save his neck—invariably “si.”

Otherwise it’s all right, and especially the row of Alps above us is all right. They are not high ones, but they still have some snow on them, and good blue shadows in their bristling ravines.

The Meserveys have welcomed us, although of course N. was something of a surprise. Ellen whole-heartedly approves; Anne has lived in Hanover so long that respectability is a deeply ingrained habit, but she is too big a person to mind. She always introduces me as “Mrs. Nick Rogers.” That makes her feel better. She looks older, by the way. Ellen is studying hard, and is pale; Bob is 12 and a corking kid. News from Edward states that he must shortly begin shaving!

I think we’ll stay here about a week. Then we shall walk across Switzerland and part of Germany. We’ll meet you in Freiburg, Germany (Baden). It is a little university town in the Black Forest. I imagine you can get there easily enough from Strasbourg. We’ll be there around June 5 or so—you come right there from France.

They say you can live dirt-cheap in Austria, and I do want to ski next winter. This more northern country with mountains in it, is so much better than Spain that there’s no use even comparing them.

I can’t tell you how good it was to see an honest-to-God fir tree. If firs grew in India, I know Buddha would have picked one instead of a banyan.

Hasta la vista,

 

Yours,

B.

 

If you want to communicate again, write to American Express Co., Zurich, Switzerland. We shall pass through there.

 

And that, as far as the Columbia archive goes, was the last letter to or from Barbara in 1933—except for one from her old Carnegie friend, Gordon Campbell.

 

At Sea

S.S. Ad. Gove

Nov 12th [1933]

Dear Barbara

[…] I hope you enjoyed your trip to Spain last winter I made an interesting trip this summer myself (can you gess) Well I joined the C. S. Holmes with Ed Anderson Mate and Johnnie Oryzo Second and made the trip to Point Barrow 71° 30’ N we were fighting the Ice for 2 month and eighty miles south of Barrow we were frozen in for eighteen days and were being pushed closer and closer to the beach we had only 2 ft of water under us and Captain Buckland told us to get ready to abandon the ship but the ice eventually broke up and a Government ship gave us a tow to Point Barrow.

Well Barbara I am sorry to say I did not get along very well with Mr. Anderson but the trouble lay with the enexperienced crew they had on board. She was so different as night and day compared to the old “Carnegie”

[…] Oh by the way Barbara I just thought of it you must be about twenty years old now (or young I mean) and I heard you were married is that true? You see I know with some people after a man gets married he dose not care to see his wife getting letters from strangers. But I hope you wont mind and answer this as soon as you can and give me some news of yourself.

 

And oblig your shipmate

Gordon Campbell

 

After staying for two or three months in a Black Forest hut where Barbara helped Helen with Stars to Steer By, the couple continued their explorations before sailing from Hamburg back to New York, arriving on November 18th. (Helen and Sabra had returned in September.) Five years later Helen would publish a book about her time in Germany—Third Class Ticket to Heaven. Neither Barbara, Nick, nor Sabra are mentioned in it.

Barbara didn’t stay long at all in New York. Instead she accompanied Nick to Boston, where she rented a room while he stayed with his parents on Perrin Road, a quiet cul-de-sac near the Brookline Reservoir. I don’t know where Barbara’s first room was, but the one on Cumberland Street was near Symphony Hall in the Back Bay.

Despite Barbara’s enthusiasm for it, Travels Without a Donkey was not published until Farksolia.

 

February 1, 1934

26 Cumberland Street

Boston, Mass.

Dear H.:

Have moved again, to a still cheaper room—$3.25 a week, which includes an electric grill to cook on, and is more fun, being downtown where things go on.

Thanks ever so for the check. It will keep me a good while. I’m sorry things seem to be so mean with you.

I went to see Ding yesterday; she is getting better, Mrs. Deckard says, but was still too sick to talk to me, so I had to go away. Gallstones, apparently.

I have finished the story of the summer in Maine. It is my pride and joy. I adore it, and think it’s by all odds the best thing I’ve ever done. But you won’t like it. And I don’t know what to do with it anyway, because it’s too long for an article—sixty pages. Would divide nicely in the middle. I could get it out anonymous. I haven’t any other title for it than Travels Without a Donkey, which suits it perfectly, once you’ve read it.

Have rehashed about half of the novel. The other half is harder, though.

Sure, I’ll go to Mallorca with you sometime. But not this summer. Furthermore, you wouldn’t want to be there in the summer. You’d die off.

Hope things break for you somewhere.

 

Love,

Bar

 

Barbara called her skiing skit Ski Heil!

 

26 Cumberland Street

Boston, Mass.

February 3, 1934

Dear H:

Of course I would work with you if you came to Boston for a weekend. I don’t have much distraction any more in the form of Nick, as he is busy as hell and just drops around for lunch sometimes or in the evening. We do try to get in some skiing every week-end, but don’t always manage it. By the way, could you use a short humorous skit about learning to ski? I’ve done one.

Anderson’s post office box used to be 65—Box 65, Seattle. The schooner he was on last I knew of him was called C. S. Holmes. Of course I have no way of knowing whether he is still in her.

I telephoned Mrs. Deckard again on Saturday, thinking I would go over to see Ding if she were able to see me. Mrs. Deckard sounded rather worried, and Ding still can’t talk to anyone, it seems. Deckard has another sick woman in the house, and hasn’t been out of her clothes for days. But I imagine that Ding has had good care, and I doubt if there’s anything you can do. I would leave it on the knees of the gods. Mrs. D. doesn’t think there’s any danger now.

Had a letter this morning from Effie Cummings, who just got married! Heigh-ho!

If you come to Boston, you might be able to stay in my room (if you don’t mind sleeping with me), which would cost you very little if anything. Convenient, too. I have fairly good working facilities— light, table, good heat, etc. And a little electric grill on which I brew myself tea now and then. Have an enormous closet with a pantry in it consisting of two orange crates, which Nick brought up to me. Peanut butter, graham crackers, fruit, etc. Quite fun. No domesticity.

Don’t worry too much about anything, and keep on pluggin’. When are your galleys ready?

 

Love,

Bar

 

26 Cumberland Street

Boston, Mass.

Tuesday [ca. February, 1934]

Dear H:

Sorry to hear you’re laid up. What seems to be the trouble?

I have been keeping in touch with Deckard, and Sunday night went over. Ding looks pretty bad—is only semi-conscious, and never comfortable, and extremely weak. Can’t so much as lift her head. I don’t know, and neither does anybody else, but it sort of looks as if she wasn’t going to make the trip. I suppose it sounds heartless, but I can’t help philosophizing about it, and thinking that she’s getting on anyway, and has to die sometime. Deckard is carrying on splendidly. She’s an awful bore, and long-winded as hell about all the tawdry details, but has a heart of gold. I can’t help any. The only thing I tried to do, which was to give Ding a spoonful of water (which she wants all the time), was an utter failure. She choked. Ironical, what?

It’s snowing cats and dogs this minute—has been all night, I guess. Boston’s all tied up in knots again. I hope there’ll be some skiing again. I’m getting so I can do Christies and jump turns. Marvellous!

Still struggling with the book, and still on the ninth and tenth chapters. Progress slow.

 

Yours,

Bar

 

Ding was living at 20 Wyoming Street in Dorchester when she died. She was 84.

Anthony Adverse was a 1933 novel by Hervey Allen. A film version won four Academy Awards in 1936.

 

26 Cumberland Street

Boston, Mass.

March 4 [1934]

Dear H:

I haven’t written, because there has been nothing to say. I didn’t think you wanted a “formal courtesy note.” I was sorry about Ding— but what could I do? Death is one of those things that leave me with a sensation of abysmal impotence, as well as an instinctive sense that I’d better keep away.

What has laid you up?

As for your questions: I am living in a very respectable rooming-house in Back Bay, alone, and writing by fits and starts. What more do you want to know? Sometimes I go on a week-end ski trip, but not often.

Nick is still doing his job. Business has fallen off lately, and it’s pretty discouraging. He is taking what appears to be a pretty good correspondence course in journalistic photography, which I think an excellent idea.

I have finished Anthony Adverse—grand; now I have reverted to the age of ten, and am reading with great glee Howard Pyle’s King Arthur stories!

 

Love,

Bar

 

Stars to Steer By was published by Macmillan in late spring. And from this snippet in the Turns with a Bookworm column by IMP (Isabel M. Paterson), we learn about another Follett house fire.

 

New York Herald Tribune, May 27, 1934

Turns With a Bookworm

While writing “Stars to Steer By,” in a cottage in the Black Forest, Mrs. Helen Follett and her daughter Barbara were burned out and the manuscript barely escaped the flames and was blown all over the village. . . The kindly villagers collected the pages, so Mrs. Follett sent the fist copy of the book to the local policeman, who took charge of the rescue.

 

Excerpts from the New York Herald Tribune, June 10, 1934.

 

Books for Young People

Edited by May Lamberton Becker

[...] Decidedly, this is no book for a New England conscience. Yet—how about this “new leisure” for which we are now so conscientiously preparing? Can it be that in Papeete they know about it already? At any rate, they know how to laugh. The Folletts sail away to the sound of girls laughing and calling, on the Andromede, a finer French steamer than the old Louqsor that brought them there. It has even a comedy pair of English on their honeymoon, whose chief interest in the South Seas is that they will get good stories to tell at home at tea. [...] The rest of the book tells how Barbara had a chance to become a Tongan princess, how her mother set up Leofi as a great doctor in his village by the gift of a spare thermometer and a bottle of soda mints, what life is like in Samoa and how Tusitala’s grave looks at sunrise. Little things like that, told in continual amazement and delight that they are happening and that the travellers are actually there to see, Barbara even has the climax for which she longed. The last ship they take, the one that brings them back to the smell of pine trees and the solid Western shore of their own country, is a real sailing vessel at last, and they can hear the wind in the rigging. [...]

 

And from the Saturday Review of Literature, June 23, 1934.

 

Rare is the gift for attracting instantly, and for holding, the friendship and trust of a stranger. Rare, too, is the buoyant vitality which refuses to recognize discomfort. Scholarship and morbid sophistication would have been excess baggage to Mrs. Follett and her daughter on their Polynesian cruise. They travel light, bearing with them only alert sympathies, stout hearts, and—as a good-humored concession to the inevitable—two typewriters.

You will do well to put this book by when the mood of ruthless inquiry is on and when you are seeking life as you doubtless know it, light and shadow, storm and calm. There is no storm here, and the seas are shadowless. For all its title, this story is of life experienced at high noon. Its philosophy runs no deeper than the waves murmuring over the beaches at Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa.

 

News of Anderson from Gordon Campbell, who was recovering from tuberculosis in the high desert air of New Mexico.

 

Fort Stanton

New Mexico

June 27th, 34

Dear Shipmate

[…] I wonder if you noticed in my last letter it had a kind of discouraged background don’t you think? I notice it myself now, I was feeling kind of blue for a couple of months before that and two weeks after I wrote you I went to the Hospital with a high fever and they discouvered my right lung plural fall of Fluid so they put a needle between my ribs and drew it off (16 hundred cc) and have done the same eight times now. […] I am feeling first rate I am ten lbs more weight than I ever was.

[…] Well I have not been able to get “Magic Port Holes” yet but pleas give me the name of your Mothers new book and I will get them both I sure will like to read them. I wish you would take up writting again wont you?

From what Ed Anderson told me I think he plans about two trips more and I think he is going to build a yawl and go up to Alaska hunting and fishing and make his home there.

He and the Captain are the only two that went North on the Holmes this year Johny as Second Mate could not get along with me or Ed so he quit and is A. B. on the Schr. “Commordore” a week out from Honolulu to Seattle. I am sorry things turned out that way but I suppose it cant be helped.

[…] I will close now wishing you the best of luck and hope you enjoyed your trip to Spain.

 

Your Old Shipmate

Mr Gordon Campbell

 

P. S. So you are not Married eh. Well you have the right Idea, take a good look around first and pick a good one if you do. Ed told me you were Married and I thought you had probaly settled down and would miss those trips you have been used to.

 

Barbara and Nick were married on Saturday, July 7, 1934 in Brookline, Massachusetts.

 

Mrs. Nickerson Rogers, circa 1934

 

Along with marriage came a dearth of letters—at least judging by the contents of the Columbia archive.

In 1934 we have glowing words for Travels without a Donkey by Barbara’s “adopted uncle,” Frederic Taber Cooper, who you’ll remember advised Barbara about Lost Island.

In 1935 there’s a welcome letter from Anderson replying to Barbara’s news that she had gotten married.

From 1936 there is nothing.

Happily, things pick up in 1937 when Barbara and Alice resume their correspondence. We learn that in the summer of 1935 Barbara and Nick worked at the new Putney School in Vermont, which, like Sabra’s school in New York, was part of the progressive education movement. It opened for business that September, so Barbara and Nick must have joined the faculty and staff who actually built the school on the 500-acre farm that Carmelita Hinton had purchased for its home. (“Lots of good hard physical work that sweats the poison out of you!”)

Back to Cooper’s letter. Holderness is on Squam Lake in New Hampshire, and a particular island was one of Barbara’s favorite places. It was probably the one she and Nick camped on before their long walk in 1932. If it happened to be Moon or Bowman Island, campsites are available from the Squam Lake Association for $60 per night ($50 for members).

 

Old Lyme, Connecticut

October 15, 1934

Dear long-absent Niece,

At sufficiently long intervals a not too grudging Fate still vouchsafes me unhoped-for gleams of sheer gladness. One such was the arrival a few days ago of your inspired little masterpiece, “Travels without a Donkey.”

I gave it a first reading night before last. Unless you are in a great hurry to have the MS back, I want to wait a few days, to let my impressions sink in, before returning it. Also, I was a little in doubt about your address, “General Delivery, Holderness.” It sounds so transient and migratory, that I hesitate entrusting a precious document to it until you assure me that you will still be there.

Now, here are some of the things that I am even now ready to say: In its way this very personal record seems to me one of those rarest achievements in writing, a successful attempt to do precisely what you were trying to do. Perhaps it is a little bit arrogant for me—a complete outsider in this particular episode—to state so assertively my sureness of your success. But I have always believed that certain kinds of work bear their own credentials with them. And, while they differ widely in their quality and their purpose, they always have one thing in common: they are the product of an inward urge that refuses to be denied.

Glancing back at this point to your letter, I notice that your specific questions are a more than usual blend of those two separate and often contradictory problems: what changes if any will help artistically, from the outside point of view; and secondly, what sheer practical concessions may be considered, to fit in with what some editor may want, for what he guesses will meet the widest range of his own special public. (And, mind you, no editor half the times knows what his public really does want!) And with the wholesale percent of magazines going to smash in the last eighteen months, they haven’t learned even yet how far they are guessing wrong.

You are “not exactly sure whether the proportion of personal and impersonal is all right.” Thank God, that you are not. I would gamble all I own that when you wrote your first draft you were not thinking for a moment of personal and impersonal proportions. Of course not—any more than Sterne was thinking of any such fol-de-rol when he wrote A Sentimental Journey, or Thoreau wrote the bulk of his books, or the French novelist Stendhal, when he wrote Rome, Naples et Florence (which got as far as Milan and, as I remember it, never got any further!) I believe firmly that, whether you are writing a travel book or a novel or a geological thesis or a Walton’s Compleat Angler, the best guide is your own instinct. If you choose to interweave the personal equation, then only you can judge to what extent it is vital from your point of view. A second-rate painter told me that he had been trying for years to paint a bit of woods here in Lyme, just behind his home. “I love it,” he said, “but it didn’t make a picture. But suddenly I realized that all I had to do was to cut down mentally a line of trees, leaving a path and a glimpse of sunlight at the end.” So that was what he did; and it was probably the worst picture he ever painted. You see, when you leave out elements from your own familiar, intimate picture—from the way you instinctively conceive it, you are leaving out essentials, whether you know it or not.

Now, the problem of making concessions to the editor is something else again. In your type of work, my guess is that any editor who has the right understanding and the right sympathy would feel as I do: he would feel that here was something that either wasn’t right at all, or it was precisely right just as it stood. I will tell you more in detail just what I think, in my next letter. But for the moment let me say that if I had been fortunate enough to come across the counterpart of your little Appalachian journey when I was having a joyous free hand editing the Forum for three happy years, I would have snapped it up as eagerly as any hungry trout ever rose to a specially succulent fly.

Well, after having a most contented hour, reading your MS, I took a liberty with it: I read certain parts aloud to my grandson, Taber de Polo. To make you understand my motive, I must digress a moment and tell you something about him. He is eighteen; he entered Wesleyan in 1933; he has twice broken the half-mile record for Connecticut; and he has a hopelessly one-track mind. He has a natural gift for mathematics, a spongelike ability to absorb chemistry and geology, and a hopelessly blind spot for languages. I think he is the only student who ever succeeded in failing in five special German examinations—failing each time by barely five per cent—and that is why his is no longer a student at Wesleyan. But Taber is a natural born woodsman. He knows and loves the forests of Maine and of Canada, New Hampshire and Vermont, has shot game in all their woods and caught fish in all their waters. I have seen him single-handedly fell a tree and split it up into something over a cord of fire wood, in a day and a half. Lastly, he got a job last summer after his own heart: he was a member of the crew who finished up the last 71 miles of Appalachian trail from Katahdin south—or rather, I think he said, part of it was a northern extension. Anyway, he personally took a considerable part in breaking a virgin trail through forty miles of it and setting up those little metal markers you speak of.

So you can see now why I wanted to get Taber’s reaction to your MS. I wanted to see just how far you had let yourself embroider your scenic background, and whether the personal element that you yourself distrusted had intruded upon the actual geography, and taken liberties with it. You see, I knew you and your personal relations with that whole little northern Odyssey; but I don’t know an inch of the territory or the fauna and flora. But I got my answer from Taber. He knew nothing and cared less than nothing about the human story; but I wish you could have seen him come to life and thrill, as one name after another evoked nostalgic memories: Katahdin ... Moosehead Lake ... Ripogenus Dam ... “climbing Kineo by moonlight”—these were just a few of the points where he interrupted me to tell of his own memories that you had so poignantly evoked. I was almost sorry I had tried the experiment of reading it to him at all. Because we are trying to keep him to his German, so that he can enter the North Carolina University, which accepts students in January, carries them on through a summer session, and gets them back into Wesleyan, or wherever they belong, in October. But it looked for a time as though Taber would bolt, and obey the call of the wild.

Barbara, my dear, you are always something of an unknown quantity. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I care so deeply for you and for your happiness. So you have been getting yourself married? As you must have realized from things I have said, I am in some ways ultra-modern about all those matters. I believe in marriage as an ideal goal for young people to hope and strive for—but not for the sake of any of the conventional reasons that most worldly minded families hold us up to. When Ethel and I discuss young people’s problems, either personally or abstractly, I suspect that I mildly shock her sometimes; because, with all her rare intuitions and liberalities, she has a persistent soupçon of the old fashioned; while I verge perhaps on what I define in contrast as the young-fashioned. Do you remember the last luncheon you and I had together one day late in June? If you had known me better then, I like to think that you would have told me of this Appalachian trip and what it really meant. I think you would have found me rather comforting.

What I am rather clumsily leading up to is a most sincere wish for your happiness. I have never had a chance to meet Mr. Rogers, never had even the slightest verbal portrait of him drawn for me. But if your portrayal of him as “Nick,” in your travelogue, is anything near the original, then his is very much a person after my own heart. But throughout my life my instinct has always been to convey my felicitations to the husband, rather than to the wife. Because I have an incurable belief that the best of men are not quite deserving of any worth-while woman. At my age I have one advantage: I can have intimate and fairly platonic friendships with women, without fear of foolish misunderstandings. But now and then, in the lapse of decades, I meet some one who makes me admit to myself: “If I were forty years younger, I would put up a pretty good fight for her.” Do you mind, dear adopted niece, if I admit that I had some such line of thought, that June day when we last lunched together? And since that thought was accompanied with all due homage and loyalty, I think that I have a special reason for gladness, now that you have solved your problems and found tranquility and contentment.

But the artist in me is always getting the upper hand of the human being. So it logically follows that I cling especially to your concluding paragraph, wherein you tell me that “Lost Island may reasonably be expected to be hauled out almost any evening and be pored over by lamp-light.” Please don’t look at it through too critical eyes. Paradoxically, its greatest charm and its outstanding flaws came from the relatively naive attitude of the writer. And that is why I have been so anxious to have you get back to it before the old point of view had too far faded. Because there is nothing so hard to recapture as a mood that is past and gone.

Do send me just a brief line to say whether I shall return your MS to the Holderness General Delivery address or not.

With all best greetings in the world, I remain as always

 

Your most faithful of adoptive uncles,

F. T. C.

 

[undated, but about March 1935]

℅ C. S. Holmes – Foss Co

660 W. Ewing St

Seattle

Dear Bar:

I’ve just had a very strange dream, I dreamed I received a letter from you; Of course it can’t be really so, and yet; Oh Bar! I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to write letters. There just seems to be nothing quite appropriate to say.

You say nothing of yourself, and I want to ask a thousand questions about you. You don’t even tell me your name; I’ve always thought of you as Barbara Hardy these last two years. A girl by that name wrote to a magazine about a sea-sick remedy some time ago, I read it, and as I recall, there was something hauntingly familiar about the way it was written. It may just have been a fancy of mine, yet it was real enough to prevent my trying to correspond with B. F.

Now that I look back, I can hardly understand how little I have changed. I still work on the C. S. Holmes. Times are tough as ever, I’m still a pessimist, and an independent ass. But you, how are you; about the only thing I can consider with surety is that you’re about 21. If apologies are in order, let me extend mine. I think I’m the biggest fool in creation. Whatever it was went wrong, I know I was almost entirely to blame; No amount of verbal heroics could ever be worth the misery they put me in; Nothing that could happen, could have been worse than what did happen.

Bar! I cannot write coherently about myself just now, so I won’t answer your queries about me, except that I have been getting by pretty much the same as ever. I’m not a captain, and I’ve no prospects of being one. I’m not married, and I’ve no money. As for escape, I’ve learned a lot about that too. There is no escape for those who think they need it: — More of this later if you wish.

(Hours later)

I’ve been reading your letter over and over, and I’ve been wondering. I’m really afraid of you. The reason is not far to search for, I’m still in love with you. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, yet why not; you may then understand me if I say that I don’t think I’d accept just being friends the way you might expect or want us to be. I’d just be pretending and I don’t think I could put up a very convincing pretense. I think you understand enough about me to accept this in the spirit it is meant, however funny it sounds.

However, I’m eternally grateful to you for writing, I wondered an awful lot about you; It’s good to know you’re alive and think enough of me to write; Although you say nothing of yourself, your picture conveys eloquent testimony of health and spirit. It would perhaps amuse you, could you but know the chaotic disarray of my thoughts when I read your letter; I may have said much too much in this letter Bar. If I have it’s because of that one little word with which you concluded your letter. “Yours Bar” is how it reads; No doubt I’m a presumptuous reader.

Please write again Shipmate, even if you think you ought not to at least you once loved me, I think, and you can trust me enough to know I’ll understand.

 

As ever

E. A.

 

Barbara and Nick liked to ski, and on one of their trips up to the mountains, on or about February 9, 1937, they visited my grandparents—now married for four years—at their home in Bradford, Vermont. The occasion was my mother’s second birthday and, to my delight, Nick took a photograph of the family seated around the dining room table. The slide’s colors may have faded, but Barbara’s smile certainly hasn’t.

 

Three generations of Folletts: Wilson, Margaret, Jane, Grace
(Wilson’s daughter from his first marriage), Barbara.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think there are any letters from 1936 at Columbia.

In 1937 Barbara and Nick were living on Charles Street in Beacon Hill, between the Charles River and Boston Common. Nick had a technical job at the new Polaroid Corporation, where his brother, Howard, also worked. (Howard would become a key figure in the invention of instant photography.) Barbara worked as a secretary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which operated in the Congregational Library at 14 Beacon Street, a short walk from their apartment. (The Congregational Library and Archives are operating today in the same building.)

Helen’s manuscript was Third Class Ticket to Heaven. Despite the work Barbara put into it, her mother didn’t credit her in the book (as was also the case with Magic Portholes and Stars to Steer By).

 

125 Charles Street

Boston, Massachusetts

April 5, 1937

Dearest A.D.R.:

Your grand long letter of mid-January has sat in my top desk drawer ever since it came, and every day, opening that drawer to get stamps, etc., I have promised it an immediate answer. However, a mere lapse of nearly three months at least isn’t as bad as I have sometimes committed — (omitted?)

By this time, certainly, the iritis should be cleared up—or is it even longer than I think? At least that ski trip sounded grand, and I suppose there have been others since then. Little old New England has certainly fallen down badly on the job this winter. I think I have been skiing four times, and none of them was particularly good. Just last week-end we were at Moosilauke, and, though the snow conditions were none too good, the weather was perfect, and the snow-capped mountain gleaming in the sun more than made up for the slushiness underfoot. To cap it all, we were in the company of some of our very best and most congenial friends.

The South American affair continues to rile me thoroughly every time I think of it. There seems so little high adventure in life, that to have one come so near and then escape is practically intolerable. I’ve had one or two fairly high adventures, and am convinced that they are worth all kinds of sweat and pain and other troubles; in fact, they are the only things really worth suffering for. My greatest worry now, when I have time to stop and think about it, is that I am in a rather difficult position as far as Adventure is concerned, where that evasive spirit may have trouble locating me! Life right now is a very quiet adventure, though pleasant, at that.

I have been tangled up with thoroughly unsuccessful people in a world sense (i.e., the various members of my family!) so long that I guess I have developed a consistent pessimism on the subject. Anyhow, it is a welcome and happy relief to watch Nick’s progress. A few weeks ago they gave him another raise; and now he is almost earning what can be called a “living wage”; though it is not yet so alive but that I must keep my own job, if we are to continue our present standard of living (car, occasional beer, week-end trips, and such rather fundamental pleasures). But anyway, he is making “progress,” and he is still thoroughly absorbed and interested in the various aspects of his job. That is pretty thrilling, and compensates to some extent for the fact that I am thoroughly bored at present with my own.

Did I mention that I have been rather going in for “interpretative dancing” this winter? I started at it just for fun and exercise, taking one class a week with a very interesting girl who has studied abroad, and got so absorbed in the thing that I started another class in another studio. Some of the time I practice very regularly, although last week I hit what I hope is a temporary “low” in interest. Anyway, this dancing has been another thing to help me bear up under what is a pretty dull job most of the time.

I’m afraid there has been nothing but bad news on your MS., and I’m sorrier than I can say. Helen’s own MS is now in the toils, I believe. I put a great deal of my very best effort into it practically all winter, when I didn’t have any time; and to tell the truth, I’m very much relieved to have finished my part. I’m anxious to hear what comes of it.

It has often seemed to me rather a paradox that the people who really have the most to say, the most to contribute, are the ones whose manuscripts do juggling acts from one publisher to another without finding their resting places. I suppose the answer is that the people who read books don’t really want to hear anything; they just want their own little pet romanticisms to be confirmed, over and over again, by the movies they see and the books they read. And so the real authors struggle along quietly.

That is swell news, about the house in Maine. One of our regrets this winter is that we haven’t been able to get up there, since both of us work nearly every Saturday morning. We may be able to revise this schedule later on, which means that we could get a start on Friday night. Otherwise, such a long trip is practically out of the question. Summer vacation may offer possibilities. Neither of us yet knows how much time we can get, or what part of the summer, but we’re determined optimists, and keep hoping for a lucky break in this direction.

I hope that by now Phoebe’s eyes are all right enough so that she can start in on the textile work. It sounded fascinating, and I know she was impatient to get going on it. Please give her my very best. It gave me all kinds of strange and thrilling emotions to see her again, so changed and yet not changed.

Well, best of luck to you all. I’ll write again when and if anything happens, outwardly or inwardly!

 

Love,

Bar

 

Barbara was of course referring to the Folletts when discussing Josephine Johnson’s poem Postscript (published in the Saturday Review of Literature on February 6, 1937). Its last verse:

 

And if the outraged tissues of the heart

(Being made of flesh, not law,

And subject to acid and the acid’s fire)

Burn down and blacken into ash,

We may console ourselves with this:

All the proprieties were kept,

And no one pained.

 

125 Charles Street

Boston, Massachusetts

July 20, 1937

Dear A.D.R.:

I’ve been holding on to answer your letter—or at least your invitation to Maine—until I could find out something about my summer—how much time off I shall have, and all that. Well, I seem to be making very poor progress at that. I do know now that I shall have the last two weeks of August for my regular vacation (with pay), and I am going to try to wring two more weeks (probably the first of August) out of these people, without pay. It seems as if I must have more than just the two!

We do think very seriously of your proposition. As a matter of fact, it looks as if Nick and I may get some time off at the same time, which would make it ideal for the Maine jaunt. If I get only two weeks, though, I shall probably go to my Squam island and stay there. Sabra will be able to spend some time with me there, delightfully enough; and it happens that my other sister, Grace, gets her vacation at the same time, too. So I am definitely tied up with them for those last two weeks. But if I also get the first two weeks of August, I am free, and could very well go to Maine for a while. Of course the island is terribly, terribly dear to me. I think I am happier there than anywhere else in the world. I am selfish and greedy about it; but if my time is to be limited, I want to spend almost every minute of it right there. That’s how I feel about the place, and I know you can understand that.

I’m glad of Phoebe’s job in Yosemite, even if it does leave you alone for the summer. It must be very swell for her. It sounds just a little like the job N. and I were doing at Putney school two summers ago. Lots of good hard physical work that sweats the poison out of you! There’s nothing else so good, unless it’s good hard sport, like skiing or swimming or mountain-climbing. I’m glad she is having good young companionship, too. Not that you yourself aren’t good young companionship—heaven knows there’s none better. But it’s surely true one has to go out and be on one’s own some of the time.

I liked J. Johnson’s poem. Of course in this particular case, those last lines are not true, for, although “all the proprieties were kept,” it seems to me that everyone was considerably “pained”—denying us even that doubtful, dismal consolation. In fact, I see the whole thing as nothing but one of those irrevocable, unmitigated messes—and a mess with a bad barb in it, too.

It certainly would be a joke if N. turned out to be a money-maker, even on a moderate scale. Whether the joke would be on me, I don’t know. I think the real joke would be on the rest of my family. My family has so long been associated in my mind with financial failure. It is hard for me to conceive that one member of it—me—could even be associated with, let alone married to, somebody who is going to be able to make a normal living! That sounds absurd, but it really isn’t an exaggeration, as I think you will understand, who have seen so much of my family!

However, W.F. seems to be making out rather well, now. I think you will be pleased to hear that. How long it will last, I don’t know, but he is selling articles, and they have rented a house in Bradford, Vermont, for two years. It is a grand place—“with not an ugly thing in sight,” as he says. It overlooks the Connecticut River, and has a view north and south of the hills surrounding Hanover. He has a garden out of which they get a great deal to eat—and you know how he loves to tend a garden! They seem to be eating, buying dishes, towels, and what-not—in other words, having what they need. And they have just had another child. Did I tell you that one was on the way? Well, it has turned out to be a boy—the first male in the whole three batches of kids! Its name is Wilson Tingley Follett—“Ting,” for short. (The Tingley was W.F.’s grandfather’s middle name, I believe.)

We helped them move up there in early June, and since then have spent one week-end with them. I am very fond of them both. They are mellowing down somewhat, too, I think, what with a little less strain and worry. Of course I can never really be myself with them, they are so sort of formal, without at all meaning to be. Nick is completely at sea with them. He doesn’t get the point at all. He is a simple person, and his family is simple, and all this much ado about nothing, these mannerisms, this literary pomposity, gets him down. He subsides into himself, and says nothing at all. I guess you have to be brought up with it to be used to it! And heaven knows I have a hard enough time myself!

So much for them. I haven’t much news about Helen, because she doesn’t tell me much. She doesn’t like to go into things in detail, unless she has good news. So I take it she hasn’t. They have moved into a friend’s apartment for the summer, and what they will do next winter I have no idea. She says she has “a little work.” I don’t know what. I may be able to get to see her this summer; and I am trying to have her come up to my island for a few days. If any of these things work out, I’ll have more to tell on that.

I haven’t told you yet about the Possibility for next winter. Only a nebulous one so far, mind, but something to think and plan about. As you know, N. is very much interested in photography, and wants to do some work in color. I am interested in it, too, especially the darkroom end of things. We have met up with a very swell woman who has a portrait studio outfitted with several thousand dollars worth of equipment, and who seems pretty interested in some sort of semi-partnership with us. That means that I would do darkroom work for her. Probably I would drop half of this job at first, and do photography the other half of the time; then, if the thing worked out well and we made some money, I might drop all of this job. Nick and she would do the color experimenting, etc., together. However, this is all one of those things that I wouldn’t mention at all to most people, because of the bother of having to explain it if it doesn’t work out. You know how that is!

Well, does this wandering epistle serve as some sort of answer to yours? It’s about the best I can do now, anyway. I certainly hope you aren’t having too bad a summer. I wish I could come out and stay with you a while myself, for both our sakes. Maybe I shall, yet—not this summer, but some time!

 

Love,

Bar

 

Sarah Allen Medlicott (1887-1984) was the minister Barbara worked for on Beacon Street.

 

125 Charles Street

Boston, Mass.

December 21, 1937

Dear A.D.R.:

So now it’s time for Christmas cards and bells and all that. Well, you know me. Anyway, the Happy New Year is the only important part of that story; and you know I wish one for you and yours.

I hope you did receive my letter from the island, in which I returned the pictures of the boys in South America. Not that I minded your not writing—for heaven knows I’m the worst possible offender in that respect—but I’ve wondered once or twice whether the pictures got home safely. I do hope so.

I’m back to the grind now, of course; have been since September—and am enjoying it more than I did last winter, you will be glad to know. My job has grown up a little in the year I’ve had it. I’m doing more interesting work, and more of it. Besides working for the minister, whom I like very much but whose work is rather meager for anyone as intelligent and speedy as I (Hurrumph!??) I’m now doing “manuscript work,” as she calls it, for the most dynamic and meteoric lady who dictates everything she writes. As she happens now to be writing a book about India, my typewriter flies most of the time. So I find my job quite bearable.

Then there’s another most interesting development. Way back in October we were prowling around the region near Squam Lake in New Hampshire when our eyes lit covetously upon an old farmhouse on a hill—a farmhouse that was in quite reputable condition compared with most of the abandoned houses thereabouts. To make a very short story of it, we rounded up the prosperous farmer on whose land the house is sitting idle, and persuaded him to rent it to us on the incredible and absurd basis of $2.50 a month—the altogether delightful basis, I should add!* We were quick to cart up some old furniture from Nick’s family attic, and place same upon the floor of the farmhouse. Follett, over in Bradford Vermont, crashed through with the very important item of one kitchen range he was not using. So we set up house-keeping—week-ends. And, as easily as that, we had our much-longed-for, often-discussed Place in the Country.

We were up there faithfully every week-end for quite a while, fixing the place up, repairing a bit of floor here, slice of wall there; getting a little wood into the woodshed, to keep us warm and to keep the woodshed from falling down. Of course the main idea in the back of our minds is a skiing headquarters. We haven’t yet been able to try it out as such, so far; but we shall be doing that soon now. For the last several weeks, as a matter of fact, we haven’t been able to get away.

I crave Russell news. What is Phoebe doing this winter? Did she get a job at that school where she was camping last summer? What are you doing?

 

Love as always,

Bar

 

* Don’t mention this around—it’s a secret (the amount, I mean).

 

Alice’s novel Strangers in the Desert was accepted by Harper & Brothers and published in October 1938.

 

125 Charles Street

Boston, Mass.

March 12 [1938]

Dear A.D.R.:

That big little postscript to your letter arrived last night, and I must take time in the middle of an office morning to give three rousing cheers. How tickled I am! How thoroughly sweet such a taste of success can be, after so much disappointment! And Harper at that. You see how it pays to fly high in the first place. In fact, I’m rather surprised you hadn’t tried them before. I’m not up much on the publishers any more, but I’m inclined to think you couldn’t do better. Oh, that is surely fine news. How I wish you and I could drink a quart of champagne on it together!

It is also fine—perhaps fine in an even more fundamental way—that you weren’t swept out in the flood. That is indeed a relief. You say you lost two trees. Not the fig-tree!?? That would be a blow.

That sounded like a truly terrible accident to Phoebe’s “rump.” The dimensions you give are quite horrifying to me. It is a gay poem she wrote, however, and I gather the thing wasn’t terribly serious, although it certainly sounded serious enough. I’m so pleased she’s getting out with new friends and having herself something of a fling. I have been doing that to some extent for the last three or four years (although not enough) and find it really makes life worth while as nothing else can.

Did I tell you (this is probably another of those items so important I wouldn’t mention it) that Helen’s book was accepted, too? I guess I must have, as the good news came on Christmas Eve, just about the time I arrived for my visit. Pleasant all around! Winston is the publisher, down in Philadelphia. The book is due to come out some time this spring, soon. They are sort of rushing it through. Is yours scheduled yet?

I don’t think the Folletts hold any bitterness toward you. I am quite sure you needn’t have that on your mind. They always inquire for you, and are glad to hear any news of you. They do hold great bitterness toward the whole California episode, but the bitterness is directed toward Helen and her machinations, and I am sure it does not include you at all. I think I would know if it did, because they are pretty outspoken. In fact they were darned outspoken with me recently about one or two little errors in tactical judgment which I made in all innocence and good faith—about which I will tell you some other time if you think it worth while.

Well, this was intended to be just a cheer letter, with hurrays and hurrahs in great quantity.

 

Much love,

Bar

 

The building on Huntington Avenue is still there and now houses Wentworth Institute of Technology students.

The Great Hurricane of 1938 happened on September 21st. Sudetenland was ceded to Nazi Germany three days before Barbara wrote this letter.

It’s good news that Barbara was still getting along with her father and even spent a week with her Vermont family. And that she and my grandmother were correspondents. I wish I could share those letters but my grandmother didn’t keep them.

 

Apt. 43

574 Huntington Avenue

Boston, Mass.

October 4, 1938

Dear A.D.R.:

First, please note change of address. About a week ago we moved into this present apartment, which is very much brighter, cleaner (now), and cheerier than the old one.

The last news I had from South Pasadena was your excited note about Harper’s taking the book. Tell me, is it out yet? I ought to know, of course, but I have just gone through one of those spells when I never glance at a newspaper and keep in no sort of touch with any bookshop. The only way I can ever keep up at all with books is by working in a bookshop, I guess! I hope I am through that stage for a while [footnote: “I mean, not reading any news.”]. I am going to buy the Sunday New York Times every week and read it faithfully!

The world has certainly not been barren of news lately, anyhow, both abroad and home. Some of that has filtered through even to me. You will be glad to know that the hurricane didn’t do anything to us personally, except we are sorry to see two thirds of the trees in Boston Garden lying low, and whole groves of trees up north swept down together as if they were no more than fields of corn. Our old rented farm house lost only a few shingles, settled a wee bit more, and one pane of glass was broken! When we went up there a few days after the storm we fully expected to see it rolled end over end, or else in smithereens.

I am at the same job, doing much the same things as before, and liking it just well enough to hang on; or, rather, not disliking it quite enough to leave. If I had any bright ideas about what to leave it for I might actually leave. Nick, on the other hand, is coming up in the world a little. They have made him a sort of special salesman for Polaroid. That isn’t really what it sounds. His job is to go about to various companies who are already interested or have inquired by mail, and give little informal lectures and demonstrations; or suggestions to people who are already using it and want to know more about it. It means he will skip around a good deal over the country—often by airplane, which he loves—will meet lots of people and sort of see the country a bit. I think it’s fine, and so far he hasn’t been away from home enough to make me object—much! By the way, did you see his comely mug in Life, Sept. 12, in connection with an article on Polaroid? And did you recognize him? (The young man whose rear view shows in the picture above is Nick’s brother Howard.)

I had a pretty good summer, the only hitch being that N. and I had no vacation time which coincided at all. I had a month off, part of which I used in a very exciting and wonderful canoe trip with two friends in the wilds of Canada—when I say “wilds,” I mean it, too; there was one stretch of four days when we didn’t see or hear another human being, though we were on the move all the time. We fished, swam, sunned, and paddled and paddled and PADDLED from one lake to another, one river to the next, each one being lovelier and wilder than the one before. We camped on idyllic little islands and beaches.

Part of my vacation—almost a week, in fact—I spent with Follett and Margaret at Bradford. I had one heavenly day there, during which I helped F. get caught up on his gardening. We worked together till we dropped, and it was lovely. After that things kind of petered out. They were having a financial crisis at the time (just for a change!) and that was weighing them down. There was a bad spell when they thought they were going to be thrown out of the house for non-payment of rent; but that passed, and there seem to be articles coming in the Atlantic now. Margaret goes through occasional very bitter spells, and then recovers. The children seem to thrive. I hear that their house survived the storm all right, although the yard and garden are a tangled mess of fallen trees so that they don’t know how to begin to clean it up. When M. wrote a few days ago, they had no light or water.

I have no news from Helen since the beginning of the summer, which is my fault, because I hardly ever write. I am going to tonight. In fact, I have long been saving out this night (with Nick in the vicinity of Philadelphia) to write a few letters to deserving and long-suffering friends, and this is the first of the series, but if I’m to get any others done I must stop this some time.

Well, let’s have some bulletins from out your way. I think I’m the world’s worst letter-writer but I think of you all a lot. Love to everyone, please.

 

As ever,

Bar

 

Merry Christmas, in case I don’t get around to writing again this winter.

 

574 Huntington Ave.

Boston, Mass.

November 1, 1938

Dear A.D.R.:

The book arrived very promptly, containing a business-like little card which said “With compliments of the author.” I happened to have a comparatively clear evening that day, or maybe the next, so I curled up and read the book through. It certainly was entertaining. I found that the excitement carried over so well from one chapter to the next that I simply couldn’t put it down. It is certainly a very “different” story, too, and full of deserty flavor. Thanks so much for sending it. And may it sell, dear Lord!

What a thrilling trip of Phoebe’s up Mt. Lyell! It must have been, just as she said, the most wonderful experience of her life. I have wandered around alone a good deal, and climbed a few New England mountains on my own, but nothing comparable with that; but I can well understand what it must have meant, both from the angle of tremendous excitement and adventure, and that of the overwhelming peace and satisfaction of it. I admire and envy her no end.

I think I have a few extra copies of that issue of Life—the one with Nick’s beaming countenance in it. If I can find one I’ll endeavor to ship it off to you. He is now well launched in the new aspects of his job, and loves it, as far as I can see. Nothing could please me more; and it really doesn’t matter what sort of a job I have in the mean time. I don’t really want any job; as soon as we can afford it I shall certainly cut down at least to part time. I haven’t the slightest intentions of being any kind of a career woman. The place I’m at is dull, but the particular people I work for are very nice, both of them; I couldn’t do better on that score. In fact, they really are more than “nice”; they are pretty special.

Last week-end I was in New York and saw Helen and Sabra. (Helen, too, has received your book, by the way; and I imagine you will be hearing from her soon, if you haven’t already.) Well, I’m afraid I haven’t anything very cheering to report from that quarter. Helen’s health is none too good; she is having trouble with her eyes and her teeth, and occasional touches of arthritis (did you know that?—I don’t think she’s telling people anything about it). Added to that is the rather overwhelming fact that the Jewish book-sellers of New York City have boycotted her book. You see, although it hasn’t a mention of politics in it, it does happen to be about the pleasanter aspects of life in the German countryside! I don’t know what her plans are; I don’t know what she’s living on, but it is certainly disheartening to her and to all of us, after so many years of desperate struggle, to be no better off. She has lots of friends, though, and her book has made her more friends—among the few people who have seen it, that is.

Sabra—to present the brighter aspects of the picture—gets to be more and more of a corker every day. She is fifteen now, and getting a kick out of being just in between, neither a child nor an adult, so that she can, as she says, get away with anything at all. When I contrast her with myself at fifteen, I am likely to weep and gnash my teeth with envy. She is happy, well poised, gets along well with everybody, a good sport, and a grand person. Added to all that, she is a marvellous-looking kid. She has got her hair done with a permanent in the ends of it, so that it falls softly around her face and turns up at the ends—lovely. She gets invited everywhere, goes to lots of parties, and gets fun out of every situation; and I guess all in all she is a principal reason why H. still feels that life is worth living.

Needless to say I am worried about H., but that is a situation of such long standing that I seem to have gone a bit numb on it. You know how it is—you can’t just remain at a high pitch of worry for years on end! The same with W. F. and Margaret. What odd and tragic parents I have! And how I enjoy Nick’s calm poise, and his “success” in general, by way of contrast and variety!

There were things in your book over which I chuckled a good deal, which made me think very definitely indeed of a certain situation in California some years ago; especially when everybody got flurried and flustered, etc. I think that consciously or unconsciously you must have been harking back to that!

I have been writing this in the office between other things, but I imagine I should get some work done some time today, so will call this off. How I wish you could do as you suggested, and drop in on us in the new apartment. Is there any chance at all of your coming east again in the reasonably near future? Do try! I am still hoping that Nick will some time be allowed to take the weeks and weeks of vacation he is owed, and that we can have a grand long leisurely vacation together. Maybe then we could drive leisurely across the continent. How grand that would be! However, the wildest of pipe dreams could be no wilder, as far as prospects look right at the moment.

Well, best of luck and love to you all, and thanks again for sending the book.

 

As ever,

Bar

 

Mary Starks Whitehouse (1911-1979) was a student of Martha Graham and Mary Wigman. As a dance therapist she founded the “Authentic Movement” in the 1950s.

 

Linwood, Utah

June 27 (approx.) [1939]

Dearest ADR:

Have been waiting for a quiet hour or so in which to write to you for some time now, and I guess I have it. You will be puzzled at the place from which this letter comes, unless I told you about Bennington—which I don’t think I did.

Well, in the first place, I hope and fully expect that I shall be seeing you not too long hence! I am to be in Oakland (to which I am now en route) from July 1 to Aug. 11, and after that driving home by a devious southern route which includes South Pasadena—or which I shall arrange so that it does. That means that we shall be bursting in upon you—if you are to be there and are as keen about the idea as I am—around Aug. 13 or 14 or so. Details later of course.

Now I’ll explain a bit. I guess I told you in one of my rare letters that I was getting very much interested in modern dancing? That is the kind that grew out of the old “interpretive” dancing—the barefoot kind, varying all the way from the sublime to the ridiculous. I studied quite hard this winter with a marvellous young woman, Mary Starks, who has a studio of her own and who this winter started a small lay group called “The Dance Workshop Group,” to which she asked me to belong. With this group Mary put on several demonstrations at clubs and colleges, which consisted of a short lecture by her, a couple of group dances, and two or three solos by herself. It all was such fun and so exciting and satisfying to me that I decided to study some more of it this summer. In fact I decided to take the summer courses at Mills College in Oakland, which is where we’re now headed.

“We” in this case consists of Marjorie Houser, her young brother, age 16, and me. Marjorie is a wonderful girl, whom I adore, and who plays the piano for all Mary’s dance classes, and writes the music for the dances. She is a marvellously talented kid, and a delightful personality as well. You will love her, and she you. I won’t try to describe her any more, as I am hoping you will see her yourself. Enough to say that she is a real genius, with music in every bone and every nerve. She is not planning to study this summer, but is just going out for the ride. We are camping out, and she and her brother will continue to do that while I am in school.

Now about Linwood, Utah, and why we are here. It is a real honest-to-goodness sheep ranch, a marvellous place, in a sort of high valley, desert on one side, snow-capped mountains on the other. It belongs to the father of one of the girls in the dance group, Frances Smith. Frances Smith is going to Mills, too; and Marjorie and I had an invitation to stop at the ranch on the way out. We are staying through tomorrow. It is weird and fascinating country. We have been out on horseback once and are going again—God, I’m a lousy rider! Haven’t done any of it since I was twelve, and then not much, and on an eastern saddle!

We have had a swell trip—have been up through the Tetons—the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen anywhere, have seen the sights of Yellowstone with all the other tourists, and, as I said, have camped out every night, except one when it was stormy and we took a cabin. It has been such fun that I almost hate to buckle down to business out at Mills—and dancing is hard work, too!

But the high point of this summer will be seeing you, and I hope you are around. You can write to me in care of Bennington School of the Dance, Mills College, Oakland, Cal. up to Aug 10 or thereabouts. Where is PAR this summer? If she is up in Yosemite Marjorie might look her up. And how are the Max-and-Elizabeth outfit? Tell me, do they still have any ties at all up in the desert, or is that completely severed since they were burnt out?

Speaking of desert, we have certainly seen a lot of it while driving through Wyoming. It affects me in various ways. Sometimes I love the wide-open sweep of it, like the sea. Sometimes the thought of so much barren waste fills me with horror. I can easily imagine going mad in it. The desert near here is the most interesting I have seen, with extraordinary rock formations of all shapes and colors, gnarled and twisted old cedar trees, thousands of little scuttling sand-colored animals, and incredible brilliant flowers—strangers to me, all of them. I remember Elizabeth’s desert vaguely, as in a dream, and remember that it was very beautiful and high.

Write to me at Oakland and tell me how you are doing. I am so looking forward to seeing you. I still can’t quite believe I’m on my way, but I’m going to act and plan as if it were all perfectly real!

 

As ever, with love,

Bar

 

Merce Cunningham was one of the 170 dance students at Mills College in 1939. He was spotted by one of the instructors, Martha Graham, who asked him to join her company in New York. John Cage, a former Mills faculty member, accompanied at least one recital on piano.

 

Mills College

Oakland, Calif.

July 9, 1939

Dearest ADR:

It was a joy to receive your lovely long letter. Now that I have had this answer from you, the whole project seems infinitely more real, more plausible. I am so glad you are going to be at home, and that there is room for us. As far as beds go, Marjorie and her brother are used to sleeping double—also M. and I. They also have friends in L. A. too, whom they may be looking up. We shan’t be able to stay long, I’m afraid; but oh, the time we do stay will be very full!

I’m so glad P. is up in Yosemite. I don’t know yet whether I shall be able to get there, though I certainly hope so; but M. will certainly look her up. So far M. and Lee have found Calif. distinctly an expensive place to camp. First they had to buy a tremendous ax (we had only a small one) and a whopping shovel in order to get a fire permit at all. Then, up at Lake Tahoe this week, they had to pay 50¢ a night just to pitch a tent in the State campground—they said the public ones were unspeakably overrun!

It would certainly be an unexpected turn, wouldn’t it, if P turned out to be a nurse? Or a doctor? It’s a shame though that such a pitiful accident had to occur. My half-sister Grace Follett, you know, is a nurse—graduated now and working at Mass. General Hospital. An odd direction for a Follett to turn in; but she is good at it and loves it and I think it is fine.

I am loving Mills College. The campus is perfectly beautiful, more like a rich man’s estate than like any institution I ever saw. And we, being summer students—and pretty special at that!—are subject to no rules or regulations that even I could object to. The work is thrilling, as we have courses with several of the “big shots” of the modern dance. My “major” is with Hanya Holm, whom I have long admired.

Also it makes life pleasant for me because another girl from our little Boston group is out here too, with her room next to mine; on Sat. and Sun., when we have no classes, we practice technique together amid much hilarity. Also we are still hoping that our own Mary Starks, with whom we studied all winter, will come next week. We heard that she hurt her back slightly, which has postponed her coming. I am hoping to do such a lot of dancing next winter. I know it is the thing for me to be doing right now. There are all kinds of satisfaction in it for me. Of course in this outfit some of the ideas are crazy to me—such as building composition out of nothing or abstract movement with no feeling—but you can’t hope to agree with everything, and I know I’m getting a wealth of valuable material.

I am sorry to hear that M. and E. are still going through a “stringent period.” I think they have had far more than their share of stringency. And you? How are you making out? Pot still boiling? My whole family is still in its perpetually stringent state, of course. Nick is about the only one I know who has a job, likes it, expects to keep it, and is earning a modest living wage! If I can just hang on to him I ought to be O.K. Whether or not I can remains to be seen! This winter I had a bad spell, made a mess of things, and have some ground to recover!

I’ll let you know later just when we’ll be coming. School finishes the 11th of Aug., and I imagine we’ll waste no time. I’m terrifically excited! I’ve a power of hard work, real sweat and blood, to get through first, however. In fact, I must get down to business and practice right now.

 

Much love,

Bar

 

Young America Dances, an eleven-minute film of 1939’s Bennington School of Dance session, was produced and directed by Ralph Jester.

 

Bennington

Sun. Aug. 6 [1939]

Dear ADR:

Good news and bad news all in the same breath! I’m arriving sooner than I had thought and staying longer! The reason: I’ve acquired a beautiful charleyhorse which will keep me out of the running—out of the leaping, anyway, for this last week. So rather than hobble about and watch classes, I’m coming down to see you. We are taking off some time today, going to Sequoia for a couple of days, then to S. P. Should probably arrive Wed. evening, though there’s nothing cut and dried about it.

If it’s OK with you, we’re planning to stay over the week-end. Marjorie and Lee have some good friends in L. A. with whom they want to spend some of their time, but I hope and intend to spend my time with you. So they will probably stay Wed. night and then move on Thur. or Fri. which will suit them and make less of a strain on you.

When we arrive, Marjorie will relate the details of how she tried to look up Phoebe when they were in Yosemite, but without success.

Yes, I know Opal Sneed slightly—a nice kid. Wish I’d known about her sooner, I’d have gone more out of my way to become acquainted. We work so hard around here that my own reaction is to withdraw from people between times. I guess I’m still sort of peculiar!

One of Nick’s acquaintances—business acquaintances—lives in L. A., and I shall probably look him up some time. He has connections at one of the studios, so we might get taken through. For that matter, we are a good deal of a movie studio right here now. They are filming a “short” on life at Bennington! This has kept the campus in an uproar and classes very much disorganized for several days. I would have been in some of the large group dance things except for my charleyhorse! To put it mildly, I am quite annoyed!

However, it does mean I’ll see Sequoia, and more of you than would have been possible, and that is certainly a bright side— a positively scintillating side!

 

Much love,

Bar

 

Till Wednesday!

 

And now another dramatic turn. While visiting Alice, Barbara received a letter from Nick saying he was unhappy with the marriage and wanted out. That letter has not survived. Barbara left for Boston by bus the next morning and sent Alice a postcard from Kansas City.

 

Sun. [August 13, 1939]

Kansas City

Dearest ADR:

Well, here I am—about half way now and holding out very well. The busses are fine and I manage to get some sleep now and then. Am really feeling O. K. and well under control! Hang on to your thumbs for me. I can never thank you for your moral support, etc.

Love,

B.

 

Will write as soon as there is any news.

 

I don’t know what happened in the spring, but Barbara did mention some trouble in her July letter to Alice: “This winter I had a bad spell, made a mess of things, and have some ground to recover!”

Charles E. Dunlap was a young doctor living with his family on Longwood Avenue, not too far from Barbara’s apartment.

 

Thursday, Aug. 17 [1939]

574 Huntington Ave.

Boston

Dearest A.D.R.:

Well, this is the day on which I promised a bulletin; so here it is, but it won’t be satisfactory because there simply ain’t no news! I haven’t even SEEN the guy yet! Because he’s in New York!

I got home on schedule Tuesday night, after a trip which was of course pretty strenuous, and even horrible at times, but not as bad as I had expected, really. I managed to get some sleep, though not much; and I kept pretty well relaxed and calm and controlled, and busied myself with imaginary conversations which wouldn’t have worked out, etc., etc. The last day was the tensest of all; I think that one day was longer than all the other four days and nights. It was so terrifically tense that I thought I would simply fly apart. But I’m pretty well put together, and I remained in one palpitating piece! When I got home I was shaking like a leaf, of course.

There wasn’t anybody home. At first that was a relief; I thought, well, I’ll have time to take a bath and rest before he comes. Then I noticed, on investigating, that one of his bags was gone, and toothbrushes, etc. So then I really lost my head. After all that tension, not to see him, was just too much. So I got on the telephone, and telephoned everybody I could think of who might know. Everybody seemed to be out, but finally I located a Polaroid man, to whom I said I had just come home unexpectedly and had to get in touch with Nick at once. He said Nick was in New York, and would probably be back the next day (that was yesterday). I then tried to get him in New York at the hotel where this fellow said he might be staying; but no soap.

I was really a wreck by that time. Of course sleep was out of the question, in spite of not having had any to speak of for so long. Finally I got a very good friend, Charlie Dunlap, on the telephone. Besides being a friend, who already knew a little of the situation from last spring, he is a doctor. He came right over to me, bringing (a) three large, juicy and delectable hamburgers; (b) a bottle of whiskey; (c) some sleeping dope. Well, the combination of those things, plus a good talk with him, just fixed me up. I slept well, and woke up yesterday quite relaxed and almost confident and hopeful—a little scared still, of course, a little strained, but hopeful. I spent the day very slowly and quietly doing domestic things, and time passed fairly quickly. I read and listened to the radio, and got to sleep last night under my own power without benefit of dope.

Today someone from the office called up and left a message for Nick with me. Shortly thereafter Nick’s brother called me up, having heard I was here. He is coming out to have supper with me tonight. He says Nick will probably be back tonight! So you see I won’t have any real news for another couple of days, but I’ll let you know of course just as soon as I do.

You were wonderful to me; you certainly did a lot to pull me through what was, and is, the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’m sorry it had to be you to suffer again with my troubles; but I’m also confoundedly grateful from a selfish point of view that you were around. The time we had together B.C. (Before Crisis) was the happiest of the entire summer; and it was delightful to see E. and M. again and that marvellous magic house, which I do so much hope they can keep.

I shan’t write any more now, but don’t worry too much about me, because I think the patient is doing rather nicely, thank you. Of course the real show-down will tell the story, and then I’ll tell it to you.

 

Yours with love,

Bar

 

Charlie said I was lucky that he wasn’t home that night. Though I realized the importance of keeping under control, I doubt if I could have done it then. Now I feel pretty sure I can. I guess on the whole it was lucky.

 

574 Huntington Ave.

Boston, Mass.

August 22, 1939

Dear A.D.R.:

This is going to be a hard letter to write, and a confused-sounding one, full of ups and downs. Well, that’s the way things are, like a giant roller-coaster. However, I must send some sort of report, with a promise of more later—and, I hope, more definite.

Nick got home from New York finally on Friday morning (I arrived, you will remember, Tuesday night). During that interval I did nothing at all except a little house-cleaning and some reading. I don’t know where that piece of time went. It just disappeared.

The first thing we did was go away for the week-end in Vermont, where Nick had had a previous invitation. Well, Alice, all I can say is that what we conjectured was truer than true—I mean, that about the hell only beginning when I got home—not ending. I am glad I had thought it over so hard. I am glad I realized the importance of self-control. You see, the thing is really worse than I had thought possible. There IS somebody else. Just how serious I don’t know, and I’m not asking any questions. That’s part of the self-control. I haven’t uttered one single reproach, or anything that could be construed as one. I’ve just dug my nails into my palms and held on, and held on, till now I think I’m getting to be quite a woman of iron and steel.

Well, I think there is hope for my side—some hope. I know it will be a long, patient process that will take all my strength and all my intelligence for a great many months. I think it is worth it, and I am going to make the fight. I don’t blame him in the least. He really thought I didn’t care; only, instead of saying anything about it so that I could have done something about it before, he just kept quiet and everything slid and slid. But it’s really my fault; I had it coming to me, I know.

I think I’ve persuaded him to give me my chance. He is a very kind person, really, and hates to hurt people. He hated to write that letter; that’s why it sounded so awful. I think that, if I can really prove that I’m different, why maybe things will work out. He still doesn’t quite believe, as he says, that a leopard can change its spots! He thinks that in a month things will be all wrong again. So I say, at least let me have that month! I think I’ll get it, and I think I can win if I’ve got the strength. I think he is a steady enough person, and a kind enough person, and also enough of an easy-going person, so that he won’t go making drastic plunges if he doesn’t have to; and if I can make a pleasant sort of life for him, I think he’ll hang on. That’s what I’m banking on, and I’m putting heart and soul into all the little things.

Here’s one thing that’s pretty hopeful—although there’s an out to it, too. He has turned me loose to find an apartment. Of course we don’t move till October, and he has plenty of time to say “nix” later on and cancel everything; still, he has started me looking, and I take what encouragement I can out of that. In lots of ways he is being terribly difficult, of course; but you see he’s going through hell, too. I know that and can understand.

So that’s the situation. My young doctor friend, Charlie Dunlap who came over to see me that awful first night, has stood by and encouraged me. I don’t know whether I told you he gave me some sleeping stuff. Ever since Nick got back I’ve had to take it every night. The days I can stand, because they are sort of full of little things; but the nights I could never stand without some kind of help in achieving oblivion! My appetite has picked up a bit, though, I’m glad to say. For several days I ate almost nothing at all. But nature will win on these things; eventually you get hungry.

I’m glad you saw something of Marjorie. She is a grand person. She should be home soon, if she arrives according to schedule. Today, I reckon, or tomorrow. I haven’t even called up Mary Starks yet, but shall do so soon.

Thinking it all over, I believe I have slightly more than an even chance, and I think that the scales are tipping in my favor, slightly, slowly, ever so slowly. I’ve got to believe that, so I do! So I can’t say to you “Don’t worry about me” because I know you will. If I can honestly send any really good news I’ll do so just as soon as I can, you can bank on that!

I had a letter from Grace waiting for me. She has found herself a good job for the winter, teaching practically everything at a small hospital in Arlington. And she writes that the Folletts have now acquired a place of their own in Bradford, Vermont, near where they were living before; which sounds perfectly entrancing, and as though their affairs were, for the moment, on the up-beat. Also they are “expecting” again!!!!!

That letter you forwarded to me, Alice, was an identical copy of That Letter. He sent one to Bennington, too, you see—making quite sure I’d get it! He said “Tear it up” which I took as another slightly hopeful sign.

You’ll be glad to know that the trouble in my leg seems to be completely gone now, so that I expect to get back to my dancing very soon. That will be a joy and a relief.

I’ll be out there again, you can bet your life, and under happier circumstances, and I’ll find Phoebe if it’s the last thing I do!

 

Yours with much love,

Bar

 

P. S. Ha, ha!

 

574 Huntington Avenue

Boston, Mass.

August 28, 1939

Dear A.D.R.:

Thanks so much for copying for me part of Phoebe’s letter. In regard to that horrible accident—well, since they are all here, and relatively in one piece, there isn’t much to be said, I suppose. It certainly gave me some shudders to read about it, though. One doesn’t known whether to be absolutely horrified that such a thing happened, or just plain damn glad it wasn’t worse. I find myself a mixture of the two feelings. The climb sounded wonderful. I suppose the moral to be derived, if any, is that you just mustn’t drive when you are so bushed. These machines that man has made will conquer him yet. Some people I know, when they are as tired as that, make it a rule to pull up by the side of the road and snatch a little sleep; even a few minutes sometimes does the trick.

I will hastily make a progress report on my situation—or, rather, my Situation. Right now I’m on an up-beat, so to speak, so I shall quickly write and mail this letter before the next down! We are just back this morning from a week-end that really was very pleasant, considering. We sailed, swam, had a party with some friends, and explored quite a lot of Cape Cod, alone together, looking for some nice country in which some time to have a summer place. Of course, whether I am included in that pleasant picture, or somebody else, is an unknown quantity; but I was at least there for the exploration!

We talked a good deal about things, and at one point the conversation got to a point where it was logical for me to ask right out whether he wanted to make a go of things. I had had the feeling up till then that he definitely did not want to. So imagine my amazement, my almost hysterical delight, when he said yes, he wanted to make a go of it. Right away he qualified it, of course. He said: “Don’t get too excited about that; I’m not sure that I can.” I said if he wanted to that was more than half the battle; with both of us wanting it so much, and pulling as hard as possible, I don’t see how there can be any failure, really. Well, Alice, what he said gave me enough heart to keep up the struggle. I had hit a very low point just before that—a point at which it just seemed impossible to keep it up any longer. Now I feel that I can; and I feel that if I handle it right for the next difficult few weeks, or maybe months, I can still win this game.

Things are far from fixed, you understand, but they are improving a little. This morning, when he left to go to work, he gave me a sort of rough pat, which is absolutely the first gesture of affection of any kind that has come my way! I still don’t know how much of a situation I have to cope with in regard to this other person. I still have no idea who it is, how much he has seen of her, how far the affair has really gone, whether he is still seeing her at all, or how it stands. I know absolutely nothing, and I still refuse to ask any questions. Marjorie (she is now home, after a terrific trip, and has talked with Nick once about the thing) has an idea that the other person may be trumped up—that he might have simply set his heart on our separating, and thought that telling me that might send me hurtling off in disgust or rage. He apparently talked to her a little about this situation, and she claims he didn’t sound a bit convincing when it came to this mysterious person. It would be lovely to believe something like that; it is a great temptation. But I have resolutely made up my mind that I have something pretty desperate to face in that respect; I am sort of disciplining myself to believe just about the worst possible, so that if ever I find out it wasn’t that bad, the discovery will just be a relief. Well, I just don’t know, and I have no way of knowing. Nick is the kind of person who may very well never tell me just what it was all about; and if he will only come back to me I don’t much care anyway. That again is absolutely proof—to me at least—that I am a radically changed person. I used to be full to overflowing with silly little petty jealousies. Now that the real thing has come up, while of course I feel terribly hurt, nevertheless any feeling of jealousy I might have seems to be completely lost in the bigger thing—which is simply that I want him back!

I think maybe I could teach Helen a thing or two or three at this point! I wonder if maybe she could not have won her game, if she had played it cautiously and quietly. She had fourteen years and two children to back up her side; I have only five years and no children, and even those five years seem to be exerting a certain pull right now! (Don’t mind me—I know it’s too much too soon to crow, and I’m not really a bit confident, yet—just a little more hopeful.)

You ask if Nick was surprised to find me home. I don’t think he was. He first heard about it, as luck would have it, at the office. You see he came home from New York on the sleeper, and went straight to the office. There of course he heard it from his brother, whom I had seen, and from other people whom I had called when I had tried to locate Nick before. He came home that day at lunch time. (That was when I first heard about what I was up against.) No, I don’t think he was surprised. He even acted as though he thought I’d been a little dumb not to wire him when I was coming! I think he realized that letter would affect me rather like a stick of dynamite!

I’ll keep you posted, of course. Don’t be surprised if the next bulletin sounds down-hearted. I know this is going to be a long, slow job—almost intolerably so, I fancy; and it will not be a steady climb, either; it will have ups and downs. I’m due for a good down pretty soon, I guess!

The other day, for the first time, I did a little practicing. I’m a little worried about my physical condition; I get tired terribly easily, and am afraid I’ve lost a lot of what I gained this summer in strength and ability; however, I shall try patiently to build myself up again, and I don’t imagine Mary Starks will be calling on me much before October, so I have a little time.

I’m glad Max thinks I’m somebody now. I guess if I live through this I might be!

There’s another encouraging thing that I haven’t told you, because it’s so intangible. A change has come over Nick, a little, in the last day or two. He looks a little different, more natural, less strained. He moves more in the old easy manner—not harshly, abruptly, angrily, as at first. And he sounds different—whether he’s talking to me or to somebody else when I’m around, his voice sounds more natural. He’s obviously suffering, obviously puzzled, and looks pretty downcast a good deal of the time; but the tortured note, and the tortured look, the terrible strain, the angry glowering, have pretty much disappeared. I think that means a lot, and it bolsters me up, too.

We have talked quite a lot about my future. This can be interpreted either favorably or unfavorably. Nick is very anxious for me to drop the Board job and get myself something in its place that I really like and that is interesting. In other words, he wants me to do the job with Mary, and another part-time one as well, if I can find one I like. Whether that is just his way of easing me gradually on to my own feet, I don’t really know. It might be, but it sounds more like genuine concern for my own interests and happiness. He wants to see me live about as fully as possible. I say: “But how about meals, house-keeping, etc.” Well, he says he’d rather see me doing an interesting job, in which we could afford to have somebody in to do house-work. It apparently doesn’t mean as much to him as I thought it did, to have me personally doing it. I had thought that it was in that, among other things, that I had gone wrong, but apparently not. This leaves me with mixed feelings. I would be perfectly happy to do as he suggests on that; on the other hand, that makes it a little less clear to me where I went wrong before; I’m a little less sure of my ground. I feel that maybe the holes into which I fell are still uncharted after all!

All this remains to be seen. I’m spreading out the whole confused picture before you as it unrolls. It doubtless will go through many fluctuations and perhaps complete changes. This is just how it stands as of today!

My best love to Phoebe, and congratulations to both you and her on a nastily narrow escape which I don’t like to think about.

 

Much love,

Bar

 

In October, Barbara and Nick moved to a new apartment on a quiet street in Brookline. Barbara says that she wrote to Alice on September 11th; if so, I think that letter may be lost. (Speaking of lost letters, I’ve been told that the next one has gone astray from the Columbia archive. It was there when I visited in 2012.)

 

48 Kent Street, Brookline

 

48 Kent Street

Brookline, Mass.

November 4, 1939

Dear ADR:

I’m sorry you should have been caused to worry by me, when heaven knows you’ve had enough to worry about right at home! I’m glad E is coming along all right—but what a shocking experience— just as shocking as Phoebe’s automobile crash. I do agree with you that the Russell family seem prone to accidents. I guess it’s because they live so fully and have no fear and no caution! And I think they are right. And they take the consequences gallantly.

As for me. Have I really not written to you since September 11? That is shocking. Well, the above is the new address. It’s a very big, old-fashioned apartment, with two fireplaces and a full-sized kitchen. Nick’s brother is rooming with us now, until he gets married, in January some time. Yes, I’m working, sometimes half-time, sometimes full time; and I’m dancing too; the dancing will go on until Christmas. After that I don’t know what I’m going to do in a dancing line. I must get some additional training somewhere, and so far I don’t know where.

But that isn’t what you really want to know, of course. In my last letter I told you things were going well, and I thought they were. They continued to go well for a time—at least I thought so, and I was happy, and decided that the worst part of the ordeal was over. But that was too easy. No such luck! I don’t know what to say now. On the surface things are terribly, terribly calm, and wrong—just as wrong as they can be. I am trying—we are both trying. I still think there is a chance that the outcome will be a happy one; but I would have to think that anyway, in order to live; so you can draw any conclusions you like from that!

Marjorie said the other day that she was thinking of you and had owed you a letter for a long time and would be writing one of these days. I don’t see much of her these days. She is very busy, and having a lot more dates, etc., than last winter. She dashes in town to play for the dance group, and then dashes away again, usually before I am even dressed! She is having a fine fling for herself, and I’m very glad. I’d like one too, but don’t quite know how to go at it, under the circumstances!

Best love to you. The reason I haven’t written so long is that I hate to write when things are just up in the air—loose, kind of. I keep thinking Something will happen—must! But anyway, I’ll try to do better from now on.

 

As ever,

Bar

 

And that was the last letter Barbara wrote to Alice, and the last letter she wrote to anyone—as far as the archive at Columbia goes, at least.

 

According to Nick, Barbara walked out of the apartment in the early evening of Thursday, December 7th, and no one seems to know where she went or what happened to her next. According to Harold McCurdy, she left with about thirty dollars and the shorthand notes she had taken that day at the Missions Council on Beacon Street. He almost certainly obtained that information from Helen, who would have gotten it from Nick.

 

The last known photograph of Barbara