A Woman of Independent Means (36 page)

I will of course send you your allowance once a month but I expect you to earn it, just as you have to earn it at home, not by raking leaves or washing the car as you do here, but by writing to me. A letter a week—that is my price—and I can assure you your check will depend on it.

You will not read this letter until you have arrived on campus, seen your room, met your roommate, and learned the combination to your postal box. I wanted you to have a letter waiting on arrival so you would not for a minute feel abandoned by the outside world. I remember vividly when I went away to college, standing in the college post office watching the clerk sort the morning mail, my heart literally leaping with joy every time a letter hit the glass window of my box. I suppose the high regard in which I hold written communication dates from that time. In those months away at school the post office did more than the dining room to sustain life for me.

It is not uncommon for a person, years after graduation, to dream he is taking an exam for which he is unprepared. But I have never had that nightmare. My recurring dream is that I am back in school many years later, all the students and teachers I knew are gone, and no one can tell me the combination to my postal box. For some reason I know clearly which box is mine and I can see the letters stacked up inside but I can never get to them. I wake up with a sense of isolation more intense than I have ever known.

My life has not been without tragedy and at times my waking horror has stalked my sleep, allowing me no escape from the pain I was experiencing by day. But my only recurring nightmare is the one I have just described. It seems strange that I have never told you about it before, but I've never told anyone.

You see what I mean about writing letters. There is something about the process of writing—perhaps because it usually takes place in the privacy of one's room—that allows and indeed encourages the expression of thoughts one would never say aloud. So although in spite of my best efforts, I know I will cry tomorrow at the train station when I kiss you good-bye, by the time you read this, I will be in my room, happily writing you another letter and looking forward to our getting to know each other as we never could while living under the same roof.

All my love,
Mummy

November 19, 1926
Dallas

Dearest Dwight,

I cannot thank you enough for inviting Andrew to share your apartment during the Thanksgiving holidays. How I wish I could be part of the fun. I know many of his friends will be spending the weekend in the city, but I am very grateful he will not be staying in a hotel crowded with his contemporaries. I trust my son, but I do not trust crowds of any age—especially in a city the size of New York.

Andrew seems to be very happy at school, though his letters are so terse you would think he was sending telegrams and paying by the word. At my request he has sent me reading lists for all his courses, and I am currently renewing my acquaintance with Chaucer. I do not want him to consider me an illiterate stranger when we meet again at Christmas.

While you are entertaining my son, I will be spending Thanksgiving with yours. Arthur and Totsie have invited Sam and Eleanor and me to join them for the weekend at their cottage on a nearby lake. Sam is delighted by any invitation that includes a body of water, and I am pleased at the prospect of spending more than just a few hours in the company of my two closest friends. No matter how often we see each other for dinner or lunch, the knowledge that we will soon be going home to our separate residences prevents the kind of closeness that Totsie and I shared when we were roommates at school.

During our school years we share so much of our lives with our friends, perhaps because so many of the same experiences await us each day. Then we encounter the divisive responsibilities of adulthood and find ourselves alone in our separate lives. I fell in love with my first husband in the fourth grade, and though our intimacy found increasingly physical means of expression we were never more one person or so clearly led one life as we did at the age of nine when we met every morning outside the schoolhouse and did not leave each other's sight until sundown.

I suppose it is the thought of this weekend that has sent my mind wandering among the honeyed groves of my childhood. I would like to think it possible for two couples to share a friendship as close as that of two individuals, but I have yet to experience it. Why is it a woman who prizes her independence as much as I do is at the same time consumed by the longing to be part of some larger pattern?

Please take Andrew to the theater at least once during the holidays—even if he protests. I want this to be my treat, so I am enclosing a check to cover the cost of four tickets, in case either of you wants to bring a friend.

My love,
Bess

April 18, 1927
Boston

Dearest Lydia and Manning,

It is a lovely spring afternoon—the kind more appreciated in New England than in Texas by contrast to the severe winter that preceded it. I am glad now that Andrew refused to come home for spring vacation, though at the time I was hurt by what appeared to be an outright rejection. But now that I am here with him, I am grateful he has learned to feel at home in this part of the country.

He was stunned to see the whole family arrive by car at his dormitory on the afternoon school was dismissed, since he had made plans to stay with his roommate Roger Wainwright at his home in Boston. However, I assured him we had no intention of interfering with his plans, we would simply be staying in Boston at the same time. I invited the two boys to travel with us, since we shared the same destination, and they accepted with a surprising show of gratitude.

I trust my son's growing affinity for all things eastern will include the good manners displayed by his friend. Young Master Wainwright had obviously imagined his roommate's family to be part of some primitive culture totally unknown to him—an impression Andrew apparently had made no effort to correct—and his surprise at encountering three civilized human beings was clearly evident. He must have conveyed his feelings to his family, for soon after we checked into our hotel, his mother called to invite us to dinner.

The family lives in an unpretentious but elegantly appointed house on Beacon Hill. The husband is a regular contributor to the
Atlantic Monthly
so the conversation took a literary turn early in the evening and, delightfully, stayed there. Sam and the children were soon bored and disappeared after dinner into an adjoining billiard room. Once I had established my credentials as a descendant of Louisa May Alcott, my opinions were received without a trace of condescension, and we discovered a shared enthusiasm for Scott Fitzgerald. They were less familiar with my favorite contemporary author, Willa Cather, having only read her Pulitzer Prize winner,
One of Ours
, but I urged them to base their critical appraisal on her earlier novels,
My Antonia, O Pioneers
, and
The Song of the Lark
, which to my mind stand unsurpassed in modern fiction.

This afternoon Sam has taken the children boating on the Charles River and I am meeting Mrs. Wainwright at the Fogg Museum. Both her father and her husband attended Harvard, so her son is assured a place there. I have not made up my mind where Andrew will go and so far he has not expressed a preference, but I fully intend to come to a decision before he does.

Love to all of you,
Bess

June 19, 1927
Dallas, Texas

Mr. and Mrs. Adam Wainwright
211 Chestnut Street
Boston, Massachusetts

 

Dear Adam and Priscilla,

Andrew has written Roger extending an invitation for the summer, but I would like to add my insistence. My husband is determined to balance Andrew's experience in the East with further exploration of the Far West. We are planning a motor trip to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park in August, and we would love to include Roger. My conversation with him in the spring led me to believe his firsthand knowledge of this country is still somewhat limited, and I am sure he would derive much profit as well as pleasure from extending his horizons further west. From a purely selfish point of view, let me say how welcome his presence would be to all of us on the trip. Indeed I fear my son would be a most unwilling passenger without him.

I still look back with delight on our visit to Boston. I have visited the city before, but never in the company of people who were so clearly part of it. Though I have been favorably impressed with the curriculum at Choate, Andrew's friendship with your son has been a source of greater pride to me than any of his academic achievements. The ability to choose friends wisely was his father's greatest asset in business and of all his admirable traits, that is the one I am most happy to see his son inherit. When I sent him away to school last fall, I was still not sure in my heart that he was ready to leave home. But in this year he has proved to me he can make a home anywhere. Your son had a far shorter distance to travel—Choate is located within the boundaries of the world he knew as a child. We look forward to having him visit us this summer so that he too can experience the satisfaction of making an alien land his own.

Affectionately,
Bess

March 5, 1928
Dallas

Dearest Mavis,

It has been far too long since we have had a glimpse of you. My life seems strangely divided ever since Andrew went away to school. My thoughts are with him even when I am not.

I am planning to take the children to Europe this summer. Sam, of course, is welcome to join us but I doubt that he will. For some reason he feels his parental responsibility ended at the Rocky Mountains, while I, on the other hand, do not feel their education is complete until they have crossed the Alps.

Several of Andrew's friends, including his roommate, will be seeing Europe for the first time this summer under the chaperonage of their history professor at Choate and his wife. Andrew wanted to join the tour, but I felt he should share the summer with his family. And after all, unlike most of his friends, Andrew has been abroad before. Of course, since he was not yet two at the time, he has no memory of our first trip, but memories have to be cultivated like anything else. As we travel, I will remind him of the places we have been before and describe the things he said and did, so that by the time we return home he will truly feel that he has been to Europe twice.