To Bertha from Beth Cary – September 7, 1919
[Note: Though this letter doesn’t provide new insights into Bertha, the gossip of a young woman says a lot about the culture of the time.]
Dearest Bobby,
Don’t think I didn’t appreciate your last letter because of my delay in answering. It was such a fine honest letter that I felt both time and inclination must be awaited to answer it. Your opinion on the matter I wrote you of jibes of my own but your “if” is the rub.
You see the man has a very bad heart due to a goiter. I was removed five years ago but left a bum heart so army turned him down. Then last winter when the girl first started to make these disclosures, the man suffered horribly more than anyone I’ve seen. As each new disclosure was forced from her, he went thru a new _____ one and forgave her. To begin at the beginning, he fell as soon as she appeared to teach last fall and was engaged in less than two weeks. At that time, she said she wasn’t sure and acted as though she weren’t really in love with him. His father said she was fooling him when he first met her. (Dad was bedridden and had an unusual intuition when it came to the real thoughts and emotions of the few he saw.) They wanted to be married before Thanksgiving but his mother had a fit and it was postponed until spring. One red head told of her father, a piano seller, in _____ before his death and her sister who taught and her brother are in the army and one in the church – a priest.
Well, first it turned out her father was a dissolute drunkard whereabouts unknown and used to mistreat her mother, etc. – regular shanty Irish. Later at Christmas time, when man was to visit her at her home (mother dead), her aunt’s, she wouldn’t let him go with her at the last moment and finally he wrung from her that the aunt was a boarding-house where she stayed. Her brothers were not as she said but a younger one was in the feebleminded school (from results of scarlet fever, she says.) One sister teaches but two others are missing whereabouts also unknown. To cap it all, she insisted on going home with him for holidays – presumably because he had promised her a diamond but hadn’t brought it (native caution.) Well, when she finally got the ring, she wouldn’t have it because it was three stones instead of one. Wanted the solitaire he had given his mother and finally got it. (He got it back five months later.)
In the meantime, she was sized up by every relative, as being a “bad one.” The nicest, most innocent said a husband somewhere but the other men with one breath said she was “loose morally.”
Late in the spring, we found there had been a boy which she had given away. The man then gave her an education in payment or as reparation which ever you wish. Poor me had to get the confession from her and tell the man. Well, he _____ forgave her that and then I don’t know whether she began to love him or not. Seems to me love is unselfish, yet she begged and pleased until all hours of the nights. One mother was crazy of course but says she’d rather see him dead than married to her. Says they couldn’t be happy because she is such a liar. Now I admit she lied but say who wouldn’t. No sign she will on the future. She admits it; says no girl ever had more to confess and we really forced the lies from her. Kept asking about family, ect. Expecting and taking respectable antecedents as a matter of course. If she hadn’t lied she would never had stood a chance of getting him. In this day and age, successful living down a mistake means concealment for a girl.
Guess she has lived OK the past six years but for the five engagements and five diamonds (all still in her possession). The men were all boys of 21 or under and mad over her as only a woman’s experience can get them. She claims to be 25 but is 32 and looks it. She is a dandy teacher, perfectly presentable and attractive-looking with magnificent red-brown hair. She is rather dramatic which makes it hard to know where her real feelings stops and the grand stand begins. She knows the psychology of love and man backwards so knows just how to work to keep Mr. Man in agony.
I’ll admit the man surprises me at times. He has given up to his passion for her, inspire of the hurts she has given by not voluntarily hustling him. I’d tell him to marry her in a minute but for the fact that her past was well known at school and as soon as she married him, it would be dragged out sure as shooting. The Earth isn’t big enough to hide some things though it is not to anyone’s credit. He has always held his head with the best and has a chance to make a name in the state. The busybodies would soon say he thought he had to marry her, ect. And his mother would be entirely a stranger to him. She has lost him anyway, though, for he thinks her objections selfish. Lots of his thoughts and actions are not as he used to be yet he is not a weak man. If he was, she would have gotten him. When an experienced woman with nothing to lose starts after a man’s “goat,” she is likely to get it.
He was an unusually fortunate man in having few if any of the fights that usually come to the young men but it left him particularly unready for the difficulties in the present situation. Only a man educated to feel that marriage was the first requisites to have, in the satisfaction of his love, could have resisted her. His mother refused the inability to love the girl and my warning that even his children would be called on to suffer for the mother’s sins keeps him from her.
How about it? Do you still think he better try to fight it out or had he better take a chance and marry her? If one could only be sure she really had repented and loved him. It is a mess and no mistake wouldn’t write you all this _____ now it will never go farther and chances are you will never see the interested parties. Oh, yes. Man feels his ideals must be lowered because he wants to marry her anyway. Do you think so?
Have mailed you a set of pictures of the kiddies. Hope you like them. Fred is especially good. Wonder how you and Reba’s boy are getting on. Must seem funny to have a little one in the house. How old is he, five? Fred will be three soon and the baby crawls all over upstairs and down. Sure do think funny sometimes.
Wonder if I’m degenerating or are the animal or rather rather India stories in the Post good. I think them as good as Kipling’s and can hardly wait for more same school of writing _____ are by Will Levington Comfort and Jamin Ki Lost one in Sept. 6th number is particularly good.
Really must ring off or you’ll be bored to death. Lots of love and don’t lose sleep over the puzzle as I have. Could like red head fine if she was only square but had to learn to like her. My instinct is to say, boy you’re 27 years old and ought to know what you’re up to. If your heart says to go on, why hop to it. When it comes to marriage family has no right to interfere and others are too often jealous of their sons and can’t realize they are grown men. On the other hand, the cleaner and finer the man, the easier it is for a wise woman to catch. If more “nice American girls” know how and weren’t afraid to use the wiles the Lord gave them for the purpose they would get the nice man they want every time. Foreign women and southern women do but the northerners and New Englanders either don’t know how or are afraid. The more one studies, the more one finds it is the little things that catch a man they are only big boys after all and one might as well start in managing them from the first, only don’t let them know it.
Lots of love,
Beth