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Letters of
A Dakota Divorcee
_By Jane Burr_
BOSTON
THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING CO.
INCORPORATED
COPYRIGHTED 1909
BY THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO
MY SIOUX FALLS FRIENDS.
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
This little volume will soon assume the proportions of an invaluable
reference book as the Divorcee is gradually becoming extinct in South
Dakota.
Species may thrive in a given latitude and longitude for ages. Suddenly
the atmospheric, climatic, or diatetic conditions become so altered as
to preclude the further development of the species--yes even the further
survival of the animal. The result may be either of two alternatives:
1st. The animal finding the habitat no longer conducive to its well
being may migrate singly or in bunches to another environment. In this
case scientists have noted that the animal undergoes a considerable
morphological and physiological change.
2nd. In an environment unfavorable to its existence an animal may become
extinct.
In the case of the South Dakota Divorcee the former alternative would
seem to be the course followed, for up to date the animal has shown
itself to be quite too resourceful to lapse into that most archaic
condition--extinctness.
Time was when it roamed the prairies and hills of the State in vast
herds, but owing to the removal of the protective underbrush in the form
of the Referendum (which decrees that one year is necessary for its
complete development), it has gone in great droves to Nevada and
Oklahoma, which promise to be a more suitable environment for it.
There are a few rare species left, but they are disconsolate and
hang-jawed and by no means representative of the species. In former
years the Divorcee reached maturity in three short months, and was so
tame that it built its lair near the city limits and some even ventured
quite into the hearts of the villages and attempted to live there. But
these were half tamed individuals and by no means indicative of the
genus as a whole. Then peculiar to relate, the environmental influences
caused them to grow less rapidly and six whole months passed before a
single specimen could call itself full fledged. The other Dakota animals
sported around with the Divorcee and received it _a bras ouverts_, but
the latter developed a slight _degage_ mannerism and the other beasts
grew alarmed and crawled within their dens.
Now they have almost died out entirely as the atmosphere grew not only
unfriendly, but owing to the sudden cool change their development was
intensely slow. The animal originally migrated from New York and thus
anything slow would naturally unnerve its intuitively high strung
temperament.
And if in some future sociological period of the earth's history some
antiquarian of the post-aviatorian age, prying into the _modus vivendi_
of the men of pre-air-shippian times can learn "a thing or two" about
that delicate gazelle-like mammal so as to show his contemporaries how
"fierce" living was before the age of trial marriages and legitimate
affinities, the dessicated author will rattle what is left of her teeth
in a contended mummified smile.
Duckie Lorna:
Sip a mint julip--slowly, gently, through a long dry straw, then before
it dies in you, read my P. O. mark--Sioux Falls, South Dakota,--Yes,
I've bolted!
Don't dare to tell anyone where I am for if my husband should find out,
he might make me go where I could get a divorce more quickly--You know
I'm here for his health. I would splash round in orange blossoms, and
this is the result.
My boarding house is a love, furnished with prizes got with soap--"Buy
ten bars of our Fluffy Ruffles soap, and we will mail you, prepaid, one
of our large size solid mahogany library tables."
Would you believe dear, that these Sioux Fallians have already
complained because I bathe my dear, shaggy Othello in the bath tub. And
there isn't a human being here with a pedigree as long as his.
If you hear any talk about my being seen in a Staten Island beer garden
with Bern Cameron, don't believe one word of it--we didn't go in at all,
the place was too smelly. And that fib about his giving me a diamond
ring,--deny it please, as I have never shown it to a soul--So you can
see how people manufacture gossip.
I walk to the Penitentiary for recreation, as I may have to visit there
some day and I never like to be surprised at anything. It isn't refined.
My Attorney is thoroughly picturesque. He wears a coat in his office
that his wife must have made. His collar came from Noah's grab bag,
and, if you remember, there was no washing machine on the ark. A heavy
gold chain meanders down his shirt front to protect his watch from
improbable theft. On Sunday he passes the contribution box and is
considered a philanthropic pest. I asked how much the fee would be and
he said, "One hundred if you furnish witnesses, two hundred if we do."
You can hire a man for five dollars out here to swear that he killed
you.
When my attorney talks, he sits on his haunches, showing his teeth that
would do credit to a shark, and fancies he's smiling when he permits his
cracked purple lips to slide back. I wouldn't trust my case to him, only
he could not lose if he tried.
Every time I look at him I wonder if there could be a face behind that
nose and those whiskers, which give his head the appearance of a fern
dish. He wears an old silk hat whose nap is attacked with a skin
disease. They say he belongs to one of the first families of this
town--first on the way coming up from the station I suppose. He was
married years ago, but isn't working at it now. I am so unstrung after
our seances that I feel like crawling right out under a bush and eating
sage. If I weren't afraid of him I'd raise my umbrella while he
talks--his conversation is so showery. In my ingrown heart I hate him so
there is no danger for me, tho' I've heard that he's a perfect fusser
with the women.
I telephoned the livery stable yesterday and asked if any of the hearse
horses were idle, as I'd like to take a ride. The fellow said he'd send
me a winner, so I togged up in my bloomers, boots and spurs and stood on
the veranda waiting. A young boy galloped up with something dragging
behind him. I said: "Do you call that insect a horse?" he answered; "No,
but it used to be, m'am." The poor creature was all bones and only
waiting for a nudge to push him into the grave. I mounted the broncho,
which kept "bronking," but after an encouraging tclk-tclk, I made a
detour of the block, then sent the nag to the stable.
There were two children and a dog drowned here yesterday--it almost
makes one afraid to go near the tub.
The man who sits on my right at the table, says he's here for
nervousness. First time I ever heard a divorce called that, but anyway
we all know that he gets out of jail on December, and I will be glad,
for the way he plays the anvil chorus with his soup makes me get out of
my skin backwards. Hope some day that the Devil will play dominoes with
his bones.
The lady on the other end, chews with her lips and of course I'm always
excited for fear her dinner will fall overboard. The way she juggles
food would get her a job in the vaudeville game any day. She sits up as
tho' she'd been impaled, and the shaft broken off in her body.
Long ago--a being, desirous of unhitchment could come here, rent a room,
hang her pajamas in the closet and fade away back to Broadway, but times
are changed, and you must serve six months or the Judge's wife will not
let you have a divorce. The Judge's house is next to mine and the way I
look demure when I pass, is a heathenism hypocrisy. But he is under
petticoat tyranny and I dread ruffling the petticoat.
Formerly the law was three months, but the Cataract Hotel had the
Legislature change it as they could not make enough money.
We had chicken last night and asparagus tips--did you ever notice what a
lot of skin a boarding house chicken has? And the tips just missed by
one, being tip. The meals are an unsatisfactory substitute for something
to eat, and I find myself filling up on bread to keep my stomach and
backbone apart.
I am up against old timers that are always to be met at boarding
houses--the dear old soldier and the lady "too heavy for light
amusements, and not old enough to sit in the corner and knit," as George
Ade puts it. She is simply ubiquitous; she is everywhere; she does not
gossip! Oh no! Still she wonders if they really are married, you know,
and if that strange man is her brother or not? Oh you know the whole
tribe! Dear old parasites on the body politic! I have also had sudden
paralysis of the jaw from looking into a country mirror and was not
again convinced, until consulting my own hand glass during the night
that one of my eyes had not slipped down below my nose. I can get along
very well if my hair is not parted at all, but I insist upon my features
remaining in the same locations.
I am copying down some of the stories that I hear as they are well worth
it, and may come in handy some day. I have the advantage of coming upon
them suddenly for the first time, with an absolute unbiased mind, which
like the Bellman's chart in "The Hunting of the Snark" is "a perfect and
absolute blank."
I know I shall go mad before the six months are up, for after ten days,
I am down-down deep in a bog of melancholy, and so bored that I feel
like the president of the gimlet club.
My stomach like nature abhors a vacuum, so me to the strangled eggs and
baked spuds which are our unfailing morning diet.
In the name of Charity, send me messages from the world I love.
Devotedly,
MARIANNE.
Dearest Lorna:
There's an old maid here (Heaven knows she's out of place) who wears her
hair in one of those "tied for life knots," and she comes tip-toeing to
my room each night to ask me if I think she'll ever get a man. Because
I've had one, and am making something that resembles a trousseau, she
thinks that I have a recipe for cornering the male market. Her dental
arch is like the porte-cochere of the new Belmont Hotel, and last night
a precocious four-year-old said, "Miss Mandy, why don't you tuck your
teeth in?"--Miss Mandy would if she could but she can't. She is the sort
who would stop her own funeral to sew up a hole in her shroud.
The moonlight nights here are a perfect irritation, and I really think
this moon isn't half as calloused to demonstration as our dear old New
York moon. There are so few men here that the female congregation is
getting terribly out of practice.
I have found out lately that our attorneys out here rob us of everything
and politely allow us to keep the balance.
My abode of virtue is filled with furniture from the vintage of the
early forties and I sit in it alone and am so pathetically good, that I
am beginning to suspect myself.
You know I was born when I was very young and have been desperately tidy
about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because I'm
so bored I have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. Six months
here ought to put ballast into the brain of the silliest.
I think that marriage has become a social atrophy, and I never want to
be guilty of irrevocably skewering two hearts together.
I fear myself only when I'm bored. Eve never would have flirted with the
snake if Adam hadn't got on her nerves. I always could resist everything
but temptation.
Bern once told me that every married man ought to be made to run after
his wife. And I told him he'd be out of breath most of the time if he
tied up with me.
I went to church Sunday and the funny man at the head of the table said
he was going round to view the ruins in the afternoon. Father Time, who
sits opposite me and mows down the food said, "Every stylish woman I
see, I know she's getting a divorce and I can't understand it, as most
of them are good looking." I answered "You didn't see the other half."
I am not going to correspond with Bern as our mail might be intercepted.
For although I'm passing through the mournful ceremony of losing my
husband in South Dakota, I don't want to gather too much dust on my
skirts on the way to the funeral. We send each other registered letters
every day--but that's different--nobody could possibly get those.
There is a woman here who does a queer, pretty sort of embroidery. And
she said this morning with unquenchable urbanity, "I will learn you how
to do shadow work." Now Bern and I have been busy on all sorts of shadow
work for the past four years in New York, but this is a different
pattern. Sioux Falls is plethoric of widows and when one is freed, the
other convicts writhe under the burden of their stripes. Dearie, won't
you drop in and try to quiet my dressmaker? She is beginning to show
evidences of dissatisfaction--inscrutable sign-manual of finances at low
tide. I'm not rich but I'm sweet and clean--did I hear two dollars and a
dish of cherries?
I have bought a calendar with the dates on a block of pages--one page
for each day, just for the joy of tearing them off with a vim every
twenty-four hours. Sometimes I allow two days to pass, then I do a war
dance like a Sioux, wild at the opportunity of pulling off a couple at a
time.
There is a N. Y. Central time table on my desk and I am eternally
looking up train connections until I feel like a bureau of information.
I have enough money to get back on, tucked away in my stocking. And if
I have to take in washing I won't touch it. Funds are getting very low
so I've started writing short stories again but "like" usual, publishers
don't seem to recognize a genius and my P. O. box is always filled with
long yellow comebacks--slip enclosed "Sorry we find your valuable Mss.
unavailable for our publication, etc." However, nothing beats trying but
failure. And although everything on this mud ball looks inky, and I am
once more Past Grand Master of Hoodoo Philosophy, I shall grit my teeth
and push ahead as I have done a thousand times before. My debts are
growing like a snow ball and although I am not entirely broke, I am so
badly bent that it ceases to be funny. There isn't a blooded dog here
except the ones we Easterners bring. The Sioux Falls dogs are like the
people--you can't tell exactly what breed they are, but as a few of the
N. Y. lawyers and doctors and a few of the N. Y. dogs have remained
here, we hope for a better blending in the next litter.
There is an Englishman here who calls himself "Chappie" but "Baw Jove"
he never saw the other side of the Atlantic if I am any judge. But you
can hand these people any sort of pill and they'll swallow it without
making a face. We have no indigestible pleasures here, but the food. I
am suffering from gastric nostalgia. I was so hungry for something sharp
and sour last night that I bought a bottle of horse-radish and ate it in
cold blood. Today my digestive apparatus is slumped and I feel like the
ragged edge of a misspent career.
Every night the man in the next room, treats himself to a skin full and
comes home so pleasantly lit up that he has to be put to bed. Last night
he must have drunk like the sands of the desert, for he was a bit more
tipsy than ever and flung apologies and hiccoughs over my transom.
I look back upon my old life as an impression received in the dawn, and
already it seems but a level highroad on a gray day. Marriage laws were
made by old maids--any one can see that. And they have decreed that
conjugal love, apart from passion, is elevating and a woman in yielding
herself may evict the sanctum of love if the man may legally call her
his own. It's all wrong dear--woman has been sacrificed to the family.
And what a degrading imitation of Nature to propagate the species. How
glorious never again to be shod in the slippers of matrimony--I seem to
demand the advantages of marriage with none of the drawbacks.
To return to things less serious, Othello hates something about my new
combination lingerie and barks like fury when I put it on--maybe it is
the blue ribbon--I'll try a dash of lavender tomorrow.
You will agree that my _geistes ab vesend_ has reached an alarming
degree when I tell you that this A. M. after my tub, I liberally dashed
tooth powder all over my body instead of talcum.
My affection is all for you--for the opposite sex it seems to have grown
as cold as a raked-out oven.
Goodnight,
MARIANNE.
September 21.
Most Precious Lorna:
I am excited--excited--from the bottom lift on my French heels to the
top hair on my golden puffs.
Now who would have thought that the "Fate Sisters" would discover me way
out here and sit on the corner of Minnesota and 12th spinning their
breakable yarn.
Well--well--yesterday the one with the weary look and the crooked nose,
got a knot in her twine and this is how it happened. I was crossing this
Minnie-something street, when a shrill siren and the cannonade of a
powerful exhaust warned me to stay my tootsies. I wasn't looking for a
big white aseptic machine out here or any other kind, so the blooming
thing crashed into us and rather than have Bunky hurt, I ran the risk
(not quite, but nearly) of losing my life, but not until I had assured
myself that the man at the wheel was exotic to this soil.
Zip-bang-gasoline-smoke! and I was fished out, laid tenderly on the back
seat and rushed to a druggery. I allowed the dramatic spirits of
pneumonia to be forced down my throat by his manicured hands and somehow
I couldn't find the courage to take my head away from his shoulder--it
was such a comfy, tailored Fifth Avenue shoulder. You know my
reputation--30 years in a circus and never lost a spangle.
What is it that the Christian Scientists have on their souvenir spoons:
"There is no life in matter?"--well old girl I can sign a testimonial to
the opposite. Poor little Bunky added one more knot to his tail during
the mix-up, but as every knot is worth twenty-four dollars on a French
bull pup's tail, I don't mind this acquisition.
I was asked the other day if Bunk was a Pomeranian and I said, "No, a
French bull pup." The woman answered, "That's the same thing, isn't it?"
Finally with a little home-made sob I opened my eyes and asked the same
question that Eve put to Adam the morning after God had presented him
with that poisonous bon-bon. "Where am I?" and it's none of your
inquisitive business what he answered. The white auto will call tonight
to see of I'm still living and meantime I have ordered fifty yards of
white dabby stuff from "Fantles" to keep busy on. No--not a trousseau--I
shall never--never marry again--I'm too full of experience.
I told the white auto that I had been hemmed in so long that I did not
know how to act in decent society any more and he said he's the best
hem-ripper that ever lived, so I think I'll take a chance. Isn't there a
great difference in men, dear? But, in husbands--they vary only in the
color of their hair.
I'm so glad motors stand without hitching. Now you'll say "Can't you
leave men alone for six months?" Sometimes my conscience does get
feverish and bothers me, but it's so seldom that I am grateful for the
change as it acts as a stimulation to my gray matter--whatever that is.
My honest intentions were to leave off my puffs and artificials while
here, just to give Nature a chance, but now that I have been run over by
an auto I consider the plan inadvisable.
There are dandy golf links here but they don't allow "Divorsays" on the
ground. The Sioux Falls women, (cats for short) had it stopped three
years ago, because they were all neglected when any number of my tribe
appeared.
Not a soul knows what I'm here for. One must never tell. That's the
first divorce colony by-law. I have become a perfect diplomat and know
how to keep still in three languages. I just casually told my troubles
to the boarding house keeper and her daughters, but they don't count, as
they are such dears, and it won't go any further.
As long as I live, my attorney says, I must sign in hotel registers from
Sioux Falls--If I do the clerks will stoop to pick cockle burrs and
tumble weeds off my skirts and help me to loosen my Indian
wampum--whatever that is.
Father Time, whom I mentioned in my last and who possesses as much
energy for getting divorces (this being his third time on earth) as
Roosevelt exhibits in the Baby market, has taken to peddling "The Ladies
Home Journal," and the "Saturday Evening Post," and if you only knew how
cunning he looks with his abbreviated coat and short, quick, little
steps, you would give a dollar for a picture of him to paste in your
book of curiosities of the world.
Court was in session last week and all sorts of real Indians paraded the
streets. They weren't like our dear old Irish Indians on Manhattan
Island, who perambulate inside little houses placarded with one night
corn cures; these were the real article and their wives walked behind,
just like New York wives, carrying an orphan asylum on their backs and
provisions for the week on their hips.
Poor down trodden creatures. I feel like organizing a class to show them
how to _marcelle_ their mops and "straight front" their stomachs. A
tommyhawk for me and no mop to _marcelle_ if I try to revolutionize
Indiandom.
Last night at a wonderful performance of Fiske in "Rosmerholm," the
house was packed with Indians and in the ghostly part where everybody
throws himself into the mill-stream, Squaw Sloppy-Closey and Chief
Many-Licey opened soda pop and passed it to each other for a drink out
of the same bottle. Poor Fiske was horrified and threatened to stop the
performance if the soda pop artillery didn't cease its bombarding.
The wind tears around the corner of my room on the bias and the cats
keep up a Thomas Concert beneath my windows all night long. No wonder I
have nightmares. Last night I dreamed that I was a saint with an apple
pie for a halo--this boarding house pie habit will eventually tell on
the strongest nerves.
Last night I cut my leg on a barbed wire--no dear I wasn't hurdling the
fence--the wire was on the side walk, where everything except the
kitchen stove usually lies. I hope I won't have lockjaw--it's harder on
a woman than it is on a man anytime. I was just thinking how clever it
would be, if a man who had a chattering wife, would keep a bunch of
rusty pins on hand.
I sat down to the piano this morning and ran through that pyrotechnical
_Solfigetto_ by the other Bach, and Father Time, who sat enchanted,
said, "You and the piano has met before." It's a shame to cheat the
aged.
Thank heaven that the sunshine is free and that the florist's window is
gratis to look at, otherwise on my slender means I should have to take
advantage of the bankrupt law.
My old friend Insomnia again stands incessantly at the foot of my bed
and bids me corner the sunrise market. A heavy heart is mine tonight and
though I try to fancy beautiful pictures in the crystal ball of the
future, I grow sick with anticipation as the visions fall away before
they are half formed, leaving me melancholy and wondering if there is an
angel somewhere who collects the sighs of such ever-repressed feeling.
Goodnight,
MARIANNE.
October 5.
Lorna Dear:
Well, Lorna, you and I were "all day suckers" to believe that Mrs.
Phyllis Lathrop was touring California; I bumped plump into her
yesterday in front of the poor-house. No, dear, I did not go there to
stay, merely to visit. Phyllis is nice in her red-headed way and looked
very fresh and sweet with the lower part of her face lost in a tulle
abyss. She lives just a whisper away from me--so strange I haven't seen
her before. She's trotting around with a Sioux Falls fellow who looks
like a Dutch luncheon favor. Every time he lifts his hat I look for
bon-bons to drop out. Says she must be loving someone all the time, even
if she is considered in the light of an accommodation train. She's the
unfinished sort of a woman who carries her beauty around in little tubes
and seems so used to audiences that I always feel that she must have
sung between the acts.
_Town Topics_ said something about "The soft breezes of California
restoring the bloom to Phyllis' cheeks"--to think that _T. Ts_ got
fogged in the matter is consoling to such lesser lights as you and I.
You can take it from me, "the soft breezes of California" are blowing
into her room in a nearby Sioux Falls boarding house, but instead of
being laden with the scent of flowers they are redolent of hash from the
cookery. I'll take off my hat to her. She was a slick duck. Of course
she denied nothing to me--her time is up soon; then she will lay her
history before the Judge, who is always busy picking hairs from his
coat and doing other things of vital import while you pour out your
heart's woes.
The fellow whose motor sent me to the brink of the Styx, is now
preparing me by night light to take the 33d degree of happiness. You
have heard of him I know, Carlton Somerville, the Wall Street broker. I
forget what it was his wife did that got on his nerves, but anyway he
too is hibernating in Sioux Falls clay. We have gotten "First-namey" and
have frankly decided that in order to keep our cleverness from dying of
inanition, we will practice on each other.
How could you, my dearest friend, accuse me of being forgetful of Bern?
He wouldn't appreciate me at all if I forgot how. And really six months
of non-practice would be ruination.
Carlton has fallen in love over his depth with that beefy Mrs. Claymore
and takes me motoring to pour his love (of her) into my aural
labyrinths. I don't object to playing second fiddle, but when it comes
to holding the triangle for the drummer, I pass blind. Never mind, while
he isn't watching some day he'll get stung, for I'm really fond of him.
You say that you are so much stronger willed than I am--did you ever
look at yourself in the mirror? Carlton has eyes that I adore--they are
the deeply sad sort that would make one think that love had passed that
way. If it really hasn't, he might as well begin to put up the grand
stand and have the tickets printed. My dear, I'd never marry another man
with a memory--most inconvenient asset that a husband can possess.
"Chappie," the Englishman, has started a society paper--sort of six
months gestation of _Town Topics_, so Carlton and I are batting around
after midnight, so "we won't become saw." There are all sorts of ways to
make a bee buzz. Do keep Bern from wearing red ties while I'm gone and
give him a shove along the straight and narrow, once and so often.
After a month and a half of drinking Sioux Falls water, I would bring a
higher price as a lime kiln than I would in the woman market. One's pelt
gets wind tanned and such a thing as a daintily flushed face is as
unlooked for out here as consideration from the natives.
My head ached so yesterday that I called on a doctor, "Visit including
all medicine, one dollar." Isn't it "patetic?" He raved about the
climate and said he brought his wife here with T. B., and she improved
so much. Naturally I asked, "How is she now?" He said, "O, she's dead."
Don't blame him for raving about the climate, do you?
My dear it is worth a trip out here to see a whist party "let out." No,
not "bridge,"--they haven't heard of it yet--just plain whist; but as I
was saying, to see one turn out with its white alpaca skirt and blue
satin ribbon belt. I've paid two dollars at Hammerstein's to see things
not half so funny. O, for a sip of Fleischman's coffee--there are
grounds for divorce in every cup out here. The butter we eat, walks in
from the country alone, and at every meal we get smashed potatoes piled
as high as the snow on the Alps. I can't look a potato in the eye any
more.
There is a couple here on business from Michigan,--a Mr. and Mrs. Jones,
odd name that. Isn't it sad that they are so happily married, they might
both be getting divorces, but as it is they are simply wasting a year
out here for nothing. I passed the Judge on the street this morning and
I was so nervous that I walked bow-legged. But thanks to _skirts et
cetera-et cetera_.
I have sampled all the churches and have finally landed at the Christian
Science house of worship, as I would rather any day hear a pianola grind
out its _papier mache_ music than listen to a poor performer.
If I had Carnegie's millions, I'd go straight to Chicago, buy a big,
fat, thick, beef steak, step into the middle of it and eat my way out.
I'm hungry, hungry. I worry down the "dope" that they deal out in the
dining room, then go back to my sanctum and finish on limey water and
crack-nells--you know what they are, a powdery sort of counterfeit cake
that chokes you to death if you happen to breathe while you're chewing
it.
Last night while trying to cut some stringy roast beef and still retain
my dignity, the man with the red tie said: "Put your other foot on it."
I'm afraid if I don't eat potatoes again, my stomach will shrivel so
that I will never be able to sit through a course dinner when I get
back. Potatoes distend it all right--I feel like I have swallowed one
wing of Fleischman's yeast factory whenever I eat them. You have to come
down on the meat with such force to make any impression on it, that more
gets pushed up between your teeth than goes down your alimentary canal;
then you spend the balance of the night squandering Japanese dental
floss. I unconsciously finish my prayers with "Lord preserve us from
the holy trinity of roast beef, roast mutton and roast pork."
You can recognise one of the clan in a moment by what is known as the
"Divorsay jaw." No feek and weeble expression on our faces but "Do or
die" is the look we have in our optics.
Every time I go to church I vow I'll never go again. The organ is
asthmatic and the wheezing gets on my gray matter.
The Judge has begun to wear a fur coat--Dakota cow fur, I think, and he
looks for all the world like a turkey gobbler in distress.
I sleep on what they call here a "sanitary couch." Can't fathom the
mystery of the name, for mine is so chucked with dust that I dream I'm
in a sand storm crossing the Sahara, and when I awaken my sympathies are
keen with the camel.
There's a new boarder here whose face looks like a chapel and every time
she opens her mouth you're afraid it's going to be the Lord's Prayer.
She wears a wide ruching which makes her look excited; distributes
tracts, and can't see a joke. She says she's Miss and leaves envelopes
around with "Mrs." written on them in red ink--modest writing fluid I've
always considered it.
Will you buy me some new puffs? Mine are all ratty and I feel
bare-footed without them. Enclosed is a clipping from my hair. Read it
carefully. False hair is no crime as long as it matches--like that
German song that says "Kissing is no sin with a pretty woman."
Have you caught "Three Weeks" yet? I had a violent attack a few days
ago. Cured it with a small dose of Christian Science before meals and
some of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, which I shook well after using.
You can imagine what disastrous effect Eleanor Glynn's book had on the
"Divorce Colony." We all bunched together and said "What's the use," and
if it hadn't been for the old man who eats his soup out loud, we would
have bolted in a mass to suggest "Free Love" to our respective
"Fiascos"--Dakota's past tense for "Fiance."
I long so to flash my calciums on a Fifth Ave. stroller that I'd flirt
with God if I met him.
I close dear with a sigh over my chin, which is getting triple (an
invention of the devil).
_Auf wiedersehen_,
MARIANNE.
October 25.
My Dear:
I've changed lodgings and before I took the new chambers, I inquired of
the landlady if there was any electricity in the house and she answered
"Yes," so today I asked here where it was, and she pointed to the
telephone. O, me! O, my! this life is wearing me to a fraz!
Last week the autumn leaves fell and in order to show Mrs. Judge how
simple and near to nature I live, I raked their lawn, and ours, clean,
and stood long after dark making huge bonfires on a line with the
sidewalk. But lo! the fleas that were of the earth became the fleas of
me and I have occupied most of my time since scratching. But anything
to pass the hours away.
Our hedges are cut for the last time this fall, and look as though they
are fresh from the barber. Isn't that phrase "for the last time" the
most desolate utterance that a human voice can make? It goes thundering
down the aisles of time only to be lost in the arcana of treacherous
memory. To dream for the last time--to love for the last time--bitter
contemplation--funereal introspection.
I am suffering from acute nostalgia--by this time you are standing in
the gun-room at Keith Lodge, drinking your first. I can hear Duncan ask:
"Scotch or Irish," and see you tip it off with Blake and the rest. No
bridge for you tonight--early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all
start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that
will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack
snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing
their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the
frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its
delicate tracery in frost; the tall-stemmed alders echoing your shots to
skyward; the big dense timber with its springy ground all saturated with
the fragrance of the mounting sea: I seem like something dead whispering
to you from the tomb. Nothing lasts longer than twenty-four hours in New
York--not even a memory, so no one misses me. It's another of God's
jollies and I know I'm ungrateful dear, for you are thinking of me I
know, with my dear old "Sport" ready to point for you tomorrow, just to
receive your pats of recognition and thanks. My feelings are worn into
meaningless smoothness like the head on an old coin, and because I have
added my quota of absurdity to the morning papers I am no longer
interesting. But, pshaw! one can't buy cocaine for a nickel, and as I
could live extravagantly on the interest of my debts, I haven't more
than five cents to invest.
Don't mind this slump in grit--it will return to par and slang tomorrow.
Keep a record of all you do to send to me, and above all--win the cup.
With whom are you shooting?
I will now stuff the cracks of my door with medicated cotton, open the
portholes and smoke my cigarette alone--Lord preserve me, if anybody
knew! See if you can't get the Humane Society to form a branch out here
to feed and water the widows.
I have just returned from a little walk with Carlton--I suppose my eyes
prattled, for he smiled at me through his wrinkles and was rather more
thoughtful of my comforts than usual. His _Insouciance_ is charming and
always turns the tide of my melancholy. He is the only man who ever
ventured to stand on my tack and take me broadsides. We have framed up a
little Bacchic plot to be enacted on our way back from the Post where I
shall soon meander to mail this on the late Rock Island.
I am certainly in love, because I know the symptoms, but I can't tell
with whom. Some temperature, high pulse and strange flutterings--but who
is the victim? Bern or Howard in New York or Carlton here? The thought
of all of them stirs me, so how am I to know which is in the lead? Hope
the period of incubation will soon be over and the blooming thing assert
itself. I have often been vaccinated and the thing always takes, but
still I am not immune and never will be until I am six feet under, even
if I live to be an hundred years old! Did you catch the an? But it's
disgusting not to know whether it is the measles or something worse,
however I am taking all precautions and awaiting developments.
I often wonder what I'll do with my decree when I get it--I can't wear
it on my finger, and it certainly isn't the thing for gold leaf and a
shadow box--Oh! I shan't waste time placing it; perhaps Carlton will
find a pigeon-hole for it somewhere.
I haven't written to Bern in days, but I don't care; I never considered
a banker as one of the human race, anyway. Poor Bern; he's thrown out
like a bill in Parliament! Beaten by a blackball called Carlton--I'd
hate to see him now. Roland the Furious is charming in a poem, but in a
drawing room, prosaic and expensive.
Carlton and I went to church Sunday and were refused communion--the dear
good Bishop has but one eye, so he sees things half way. I said: "If
this is God's table, I want communion, if it's the Episcopal, I don't."
In his sermon he called divorcees "social lepers, social filthiness,"
and said: "After the new law goes into effect, we'll have no more
dumping here." He's an old pop-gun that shoots spit-balls, so the wounds
he makes are not fatal. Carlton refuses to go to church here or anywhere
else again, and will once more trudge along his Sunday field of Bacchus
cultivated by Venus.
By the way, after June 1st, all divorcees will be required to stay one
year, then they won't come at all. Oklahoma had a hunch and changed her
law back to three months. Now the colony will transplant itself, then
watch the death agony of Sioux Falls. She's foolish--foolish! The
Easterners have made this burg what it is. Take away our influence and
she'll sink into nothingness again. Some of us are bad, but all of us
are not; however, the Sioux Falls gossips make no distinction. They lift
their $2.98 skirts when they pass us, for fear of inoculation by the
_bacillus_ divorce. I often wonder if they realize that the prejudice is
returned with compound interest.
When any new gossip is born, they fly around the streets like the beads
of a rosary when the string is snapped. Perhaps you haven't noticed how
serious this letter is. I'm frowning as I write--a habit most bad on the
eyebrows--surest of signs that I am sinking again into the quagmire of
love.
I have felt my pulse so often and know all the symptoms--which I more
than enjoy scrutinizing--not even the finest emotion escapes me. I
believe that I play the game well for I am still unjaded, which is
unusual with so much over-feeding.
Is your new fur coat unborn lamb, or did it happen? Speaking of
possessions--my appendix still gives me ample proof of its constancy.
The blue devils are chasing me today and I am wearing the expression
that sits on the lips of every portrait in every exhibition. I smile to
keep from crying, because if I cry--I'm lost!
As I am of the experienced elite of society that sups, I must bid you
adieu--I promise more jocosity in my next.
Affy,
MARIANNE.
December 1.
Since writing you I have heard the turkey gobbler say his last prayer
and have had a coming out party for "Penny," short for appendix. The
receiving party was comprised of two eminent surgeons, two trained
nurses, who served adhesive plaster and instruments, and an "etherist"
who poured. Costumes were uniformly white with great profusion of gauze
trimmings, with which I also eventually became somewhat decorated. One
of the internes wasn't half bad, so I kept the nurse busy combing my
adopted hair and pinning it on becomingly. It is a much quicker and
easier process to have your appendix cut out than your husband.
I was away four weeks and am now back in Sioux and well taken care of by
my landlady, whose hair and face disagree as to age. My walls are hung
with ten-cent store art, and if I were not awfully strong-minded I could
not overcome the effect.
The white auto called last night, and as my head rested on his shoulder
our conversation was the rambling sort that may be ticketed "all rights
reserved," so I won't repeat it as the postmaster-general would refuse
me stamps in the future if I sent it through the mail. In Chicago they'd
take out my phone if I squeaked it over the wires. Carlton is deeply
interested in some mines out here--spinach mines I think. I made up my
mind to something last night--I am determined to get him away from that
carrotty giraffe whom he used to believe he loved. If in my
convalescent state I am unable to arouse his sympathy, I'll relapse into
white muslin emotions and thereby gain my end. I am made from dust and
the slightest rustle from the right man's coat can blow me whithersoever
it willeth. You know I am a spoiled child who has had everything it
wanted, so bon-bons no longer excite me. Carlton is so thin that you can
see daylight through his lattice work, and cold as paving stone in
winter. He's a real "millionery," but his cash is 40 degrees below, so I
am determined to warm up his eagles and teach them to fly. I am going to
touch that cash box under his left breast and show him that the devil
has a sister. The man wants bleeding--he has too many bank notes in his
veins. He seems to be toppling so I might as well register him in my
"Book of Mistakes."
Do you know that I still keep a record of these undying passions of mine
with a picture of each culprit attached, and Carlton is 999. I thought,
when I was sixteen, I would record the one divine fire that was
like to consume me, and now I have eighteen volumes of this
105-degrees-in-the-shade literature, all bound alike in a perfect
_edition de luxe_. I'd rather regret what I have done than what I have
not done. You dear old ostrich, I can hear you sigh over me, but don't
you waste your gasoline. You, too, should have callouses on your
emotions by this time.
Bunky and Othello have both decided to bark at my chemiselets and
skirtlets in one,--maybe they think they are too flossy to be concealed.
I agree there.
Phyllis Lathop's lawyer, Mr. Maryan Soe Early, got her decree for her
last week and she flew back on the 3.30 train to Manhattan and Gordon
Booth. Of course everyone knows that he is booked.
Her plea was extreme cruelty; said her husband struck her. The dear old
judge asked her to explain in detail some of the circumstances of her
husband's brutality. She said: "While crossing Lake Michigan there was a
terrible storm on, and as my husband was descending from the upper
berth, the boat lurched and he struck me with his elbow." Phyllis said
the judge smiled very broadly and gave her her decree on "Extreme
Nerve," instead of "Extreme Cruelty."
She writes that she and Gordon are having such times together--batting
around their old stamping ground, Bronx Park--strange how hard it is to
overcome habits. They slink off to the New York woman's trysting place
when there is no longer any reason for secrecy. One bitter cold day last
winter Bern and I met Phyllis and Gordon in the very spot that we always
frequented, and poor individuals were stamping their feet to keep them
from freezing. The monkey house was full of people and they dared not
remain there any longer. We all smiled as much as to say: "You don't
tell, and I certainly won't." Not a word ever came out, so the treaty
was well kept. Bern and I were more or less engaged at the time.
We laughed over it when she was out here, and I asked her why she never
repeated it, as she never keeps anything to her gossipy self. She
answered: "If I had said that I had seen you there, I would have had to
explain my own presence in the park, and I never incriminate myself."
She says that "there are two new kinds of monkeys out there and one
looks like Elbert Hubbard--sits all day surrounded by his hair."
She's running a bar in connection with her tea table now, which is
equivalent to putting salt on the tail of the social male bird. She can
hardly believe that she's free, and says that it will take some time for
her to realize "that there aint no beast." Isn't it strange that the
most fascinating lover in the world can turn into the veriest beast
within six months after he has hit you on the head and dragged you
senseless into his Fifth Avenue home? Of course you're senseless or you
would not have tied up.
Phyllis says that she has gotten out of the habit of decent food, that
every time she really dines, she gets strange pains in her underneath. I
wish I could fly back home, but I must grit my teeth and get rid of my
beast too. I wonder which breed I'll try next time. Boston Bull, I
suppose, I think that's where Carlton was first kenneled.
I have a large stove in my sitting-room and keep it going myself.
Othello looks as though he'd laugh himself to death every time I put
coal on--darn his pelt! He's crazy over Sioux Falls--possibly because
there are seven dogs to the city block. He goes away on bridal tours
every few days and then I have to get out a search warrant. I could live
quite decently if I did not have to invest in so many rewards for him.
It is so terribly cold here that my very thoughts are frozen and my
hot-water bag does nightly service. The thing sprung a leak last week
and I took it to a garage to ask if they would mend it, and the fellow
answered: "Certainly, madam, we have quite a trade in hot-water bottles
and "nature's rivals."" I have also found out that the only place to buy
burnt wood is at Mr. Trepaning's the undertaker and embalmer.
All the stiff and crackling branches of the trees are weighted down with
a three-inch ruching of snow. It is all silently fascinating, especially
so because since starting this letter two short raps at my window
announce Carlton who comes each night to accompany me to the late post
after the landlady is snoozing. His arms are around me as I scrawl, and
the thousand tiny little thrills that answer so eagerly to his
nearness, assure me that it is not deplorable to be thirty-nine.
Good night,
MARIANNE.
December 20.
So near Xmas, dear, yet none of the Yule-tide joys float out to this
frozen wilderness. Snow, snow everywhere. The tall alders, whose vivid
coloring so inspired me when I arrived, are now black and gaunt, and the
pitiless desert wind comes tearing and howling from the north to bend
and crack their stiffened joints. I often wonder--am I any more the
arbiter of my fate than these lifeless snow-draped spectres around me.
Carlton left the hotel almost a week ago and took the room next to mine.
We are hopelessly in love with each other, and he wonders how he ever
could have thought of accepting happiness from Mrs. Claymore,
accompanied by so many freckles and a half million dollars.
As for Bern, dear, he will survive. I am much older than he is, so that
some day he would be forty with all his emotions and I would be fifty
with the rheumatism--it would never do. Henceforth I shall be prodigal
of negatives, except where Carlton is concerned.
We have attained the intimacy which thinks aloud, and instead of hating
Sioux Falls and longing for my sentence to expire, I am beginning to
worship every inch of the ground, and only pray that such an exile
should last forever.
None of the fulminating fires that I have heretofore known are
mine--only calm and peace and the joys born of a perfect understanding.
We have not let the moment slip when souls meet in comprehension. I
almost decided not to confide all this to you, but it slipped off my
pen and I'm not sorry, for no woman living was ever before blessed with
a friend like you. You and I have visited the lowest Dantesque circles
of despair together, and no confidence between us could amount to an
indiscretion.
Our landlady thinks that we are merely speaking acquaintances, and it is
best, as this new-found sympathy must not be distilled by Sioux Falls
scandal-mongers, though I should like to shout it from the house tops
through a megaphone, I am so happy and proud of it.
So you shot with Aldrich and he tried to get you to buy "Steel
Preferred." I am glad you did not invest and sorry you did not win the
cup. I shall never again shoot for pleasure. I am ashamed of my
trophies. Perhaps love has made me mushy but I don't regret it as hate
made me flinty. Have you noticed how our bonds have slumped--the whole
thing was a Golden Fleece. Commercialism bores me to extinction. I
suppose the world began with trade, since Adam sold Paradise for a
pippin.
Are you still of the opinion that tradespeople should be branded on the
forehead down to the third generation?--you dear snobbish treasure.
Henceforth I shall only deal in sentimental tramways and have shares in
the moral funds--maybe not moral according to the threadbare ideal of
the genus _homo sapiens_.
Surprising that a girl as young as Alice Noah--no relation to the fellow
who built the ark--should just take out legal separation papers in New
York. How can the _modus vivendi_ suit her better than divorce? Perhaps
she wants to cinch her alimony until she finds another affinity. Then
Alice for Dakota. It is foolish to cut your financial string when you
might just as well dangle, especially until you find something worth
dropping for.