by Bob Spitz
Still, “it was a marvelous, magical place,” as Julia recalled, a place for privileged young women to grow and to blossom. There were tennis courts and a lake and a soccer field where students played a dazzling range of sports. A woodsy amphitheater—called “the glen”—served as a natural backdrop for dramatic productions. But, at the outset, many of these girls from the land of plenty suffered culture shock. They got a blow on registration day, when their parents finally left and, standing there alone, in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar classmates, everyone in new dresses and hats, the boom was lowered. The Katharine Branson School wasn’t a refuge for dilettantes; they weren’t in business to pamper or indulge. The school had rigid rules and uniforms and demanding academic standards. No one would be given any special treatment. For many girls, it was the first time they’d encountered anything of the sort: being away from home and at the mercy of a no-nonsense headmistress. And for others, like Julia McWilliams, it was nothing to sweat.
Julia dealt with rules the way she later dealt with vegetarians: she pretended they didn’t exist. She wasn’t intimidated by the guidelines or the alien situation. She wasn’t subdued. So comfortable was Julia with her new surroundings, moreover, that when rooms in the Res became unexpectedly overbooked, she volunteered to live apart in a quirky little cottage with her cousin Dana, who was enrolled in the same class. When it came to readjustment, Julia was one cool customer, owing, as one classmate observed, to “her complete lack of self-consciousness … feeling at home and at ease anywhere,” and a natural rhythm for marching to her own drumbeat.
She rolled herself right into the social structure of KBS, although there were rules aplenty that invited much grumbling. The Bible, for one thing. It was mandatory that girls bring a Bible to school and carry it to services at St. John’s Episcopal Church every Sunday morning. Even as a teenager, Julia was outspoken in her attitude toward religion. “She thought it was rot,” says a family member familiar with her beliefs. Julia’s parents were Presbyterians, “but only in a WASPy kind of way,” abandoning regular church attendance by the time Julia was ten. And Julia made no bones about the school’s fussy requirement. “I hated having to go to church,” she complained, which extended to morning prayer, the saying of grace before meals, and the singing of vespers before bed.
Nor was there any love lost with respect to school uniforms—and there were compulsory outfits for myriad occasions. One thing was clear: the school’s motto, “Truth is beauty and beauty is truth,” did not extend to the uniforms. Miss Branson, no clotheshorse by any stretch of the imagination, was oblivious to fashion. Each year before the school term began, she went to Spaulding’s in San Francisco and placed an order for two ensembles that the girls would rotate according to seasons. The summer uniform, befitting a waitress at Chock Full o’Nuts, was blue-and-white checked gingham, worn with Spaulding loafers or saddle shoes. In winter it was replaced by something known as “the lapis lazuli tweed.” “It had a skirt which didn’t do the most for any of us,” recalled a 1926 alumna, “and a short little jacket with a round collar that came open in the front in a rather weird way.” A blue or red sweater accompanied the get-up. Girls wore different dresses to dinner: short frocks with either white crêpe de chine pleated with cascading sleeves or the famous Katharine Branson blue—“French Blue” they called it—found in every decorative feature on campus. To complete the wardrobe, there were athletic uniforms for the school’s intrasquad teams, the Blue Bonnets and the Tam o’Shanters, for which the girls wore cardigans with “floppy hats that were really awful,” and for basketball games, long, baggy, black-satin bloomers and white middies with black cotton leggings that never failed to draw disapproving groans.
At least the dining rules didn’t bother Julia. Girls were expected to eat everything on their plates, whether they liked it or not. And there was a lot not to like. The school cooking was mediocre, institutional—worse: indifferent. But food was nothing but fuel to Julia, who continued to grow off the charts. There wasn’t anything she refused to eat. Gluey rice pudding, calf’s liver, sardines—all fine by Julia. She never went through the contrivances that beset other girls, who would fill their cheeks with whatever food they dreaded and then bolt for the bathroom.
Julia, for the most part, was an exemplary KBS girl. She threw herself into that first year of school, jumping center for the basketball team, acting in a number of dramatic revues, attending current-events lectures and the occasional cultural outing to San Francisco, where the girls, in groups of two, spent time rummaging through shops. “On Saturdays, my friends and I would put on Prince Matchabelli cherry-red lipstick and go in to San Francisco and have artichokes and cinnamon toast,” she told The New York Times in 1989. Nothing seemed to inhibit Julia—aside from her schoolwork.
“I wasn’t anyone’s idea of a model student,” she admitted. The classes were demanding, an everyday mix of traditional subjects, with extra emphasis on both Latin and French. Julia “hated Latin,” which was taught by the steely-eyed Katharine Branson herself, “who demanded perfection and generally got it.” And French—one would assume it came naturally to Julia. Mais non, non, according to her teacher, Mademoiselle Bègue. She blamed it on Julia’s “explosive consonants attributed to Scotch ancestry,” but the reason was probably closer to lack of interest. “I was pretty well caught up in the social aspect of school,” Julia recalled without a trace of remorse. “There were so many wonderful distractions. As far as the studies went, I did just enough to get by.”
Julia’s feeble report card didn’t seem to bother her parents. Nothing extraordinary in the way of scholarship was expected of her; after all, a daughter’s role was to become a good wife. During the Christmas break, at the end of her first semester, John and Caro treated Julia like a special guest. Average grades weren’t about to spoil her homecoming. That, as it turned out, would take something completely unexpected.
The first sign of trouble came on the afternoon of December 8, 1927, when Caro took a frantic call from her friend, Betty Stevens. The Stevens and McWilliams families enjoyed a close and entangled relationship. Francis Stevens, who was vice-president of both the First National Bank of Pasadena and First Trust and Savings Bank, handled most of John’s personal business in addition to being his longtime golfing partner and most trusted friend. Julia and their daughter, Carol, had played together since childhood, as had John Jr. and their youngest son, George. Many of their family celebrations were joyously intertwined. In fact, when John put the State Street house up for sale, it seemed right and proper when Francis bought it. They had their share of trying times, as well. When young George was expelled from school, Caro spent time comforting Betty without discussing the expulsion’s actual cause, an incident of homosexuality. More comfort and encouragement had been needed a few months earlier, when Francis Jr., a star pupil at the University of Michigan, wrapped his car around a telephone pole, suffering a basal skull fracture that affected his mind.
This time, however, it was something much more serious. That morning, Francis Stevens went to work early, around eight, making small talk with the cashiers as they prepared their morning cash drawers. He seemed in a cheerful enough mood, even as he made certain that his will was in order. An hour later, he drove over to the Garfield School and picked up George. They sat in the car talking for several minutes before driving off—where no one knows, but it must have been to a secluded spot, because at 9:15 he put a pistol to George’s temple and shot him dead. A few minutes later, he pulled up to Las Encinas, a posh sanitarium where his son Francis Jr. was recuperating in a private bungalow. They took a leisurely walk around the grounds until they came to the tennis courts in the rear, where Francis murdered his second son. Afterward, Stevens put the barrel of the gun into his own mouth and finished the job.
Julia’s family was predictably distraught. No one had seen this coming, not even John, who had shared every intimacy with Francis Stevens. There was even a letter left for him the morning of the
tragedy, a handwritten note addressed to John in the pages of the will, assuring all successors that the family’s finances were in order. John was inconsolable—over the seemingly senseless deaths, over the loss of his dear friend. How did one put something so incomprehensible into perspective? How does one equate it to one’s own family circumstances?
The murders’ effect on Julia was also profound. The impact from the shock was complex, confusing. This was her first experience with tragedy of any kind, the first time her safe, perfect world was jolted by unpleasantness. The death of young George was especially disturbing. He was the same age as her brother, John, with similar traits—at least, as far as Julia knew. George was described as slow, odd, even “retarded,” all euphemisms, of course, to mask his true nature. Homosexuality wasn’t part of anyone’s vocabulary, not in Pasadena, not among the cream of society. Nor would Julia have understood it had she heard the word used. But slow, odd … she’d overheard her parents say they had a son who was unnaturally slow, so slow, in fact, that they’d been discussing sending him to the Los Alamos Ranch School, a rigorous boot-camp type academy on an isolated plateau in the New Mexico wilds, where “difficult” boys got a “disciplined” education. The similarities were too troubling for Julia to process. Usually, she was so upbeat, so irrepressible, but throughout the holiday she lapsed into inscrutable silences, long, brooding reveries when that outlook seemed unreachable. Her parents grew more guarded. There was talk of keeping Julia at home with them, for the time being, instead of sending her back to boarding school. But Julia eventually shook herself out of it. She insisted on returning to KBS at the end of her vacation, joining her cousin on the trip back to school, a long, meandering journey by train, ferry, and limousine, during which her personality reemerged. Not a word was mentioned about the tragedy in Pasadena. Years later, Julia’s closest friends would recall how she always managed to maintain a game face, how intimate questions were deflected with glancing expertise. There were places, personal places, she just refused to go. In an essay entitled “A True Confession” that appeared in her senior yearbook, Julia came as close as she ever would to questioning her “emotional machinery,” when she wrote: “Bear in mind always that an X‑ray would show my heart to be no softer than a rock!” Julia’s deepest feelings were invariably off-limits, perhaps even to herself. She pushed them aside and went on.
None of her classmates at KBS saw anything more than the occasional silences.
Julia McWilliams became a standout at boarding school, the kind of student who, in those days, was recognized as BMOC. She was elected student council president, as well as captain of the basketball team. A blooming extrovert, she joined the Fantastics, a drama group made up of the resident girls, who put on two or three plays a year, including the annual performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was a legendary botch job. She was named president of the Vagabonds, a hiking club, whose ambitious climb to the top of Mount Tamalpais capped a year of grinding marches along dirt roads. And the first week of May, when all regular classes were canceled to launch a play on the front lawn, Julia usually snagged herself a plum part, not a lead—those were reserved for the ingénues, which wasn’t Julia’s style—but something that stole the spotlight and occasionally the show. “I was usually cast as a fish or something,” she recalled, “never as the beautiful princess.” Playing men also seemed to be her stock-in-trade—Michael, the Sword Eater was a particularly memorable role—and when her roué had to romance the heroine in Pomander Walk, the audience cracked up as Julia leaned in to plant a kiss.
There wasn’t anything, short of prayer, that Julia wouldn’t attempt. It was impossible to dispirit her. She had great reserves of spunk, which was what made her one of Katharine Branson’s favorites. Despite Julia’s “moderately good” grades—praise from the headmistress that was generous at best—she loved Julia’s “joyousness of spirit … [her] refreshing naïveté.” There was a lot to recommend Julia McWilliams. Though, had Miss Branson discovered that Julia and a day student who lived across from campus routinely broke into her uncle’s liquor cabinet and made themselves martinis, it seems likely Julia’s stock would have plummeted. Instead, on graduation day, in June 1930, at a ceremony on the lawn under an enormous cedar tree, Julia was awarded the vaunted school cup presented to the senior considered to be the School’s First Citizen.
Julia McWilliams was “on her way,” Katharine Branson announced to a gallery of beaming faces. She was a “practical, wholesome type of girl with superior intelligence.” Nothing would stop her from attaining anything she wanted.
But what she wanted was a mystery to even Julia herself.
Three
Julia of the Almost Spring
Julia studied the Smith College registration form with a degree of unease. On the line below the space provided for course preferences, there was a question that threw her an unexpected curve. It was labeled “Vocational Choice,” with room enough to write half a résumé. The many forms at orientation required only standard information, but this one was tricky. The girls on either side of her were scribbling away, compiling a wish list of impressive professions: pediatrician, nutritionist, interpreter, lawyer, choreographer, historian … Smithies were known to reach for the stars. There were so few colleges that encouraged women to excel, to compete for the same jobs as those open to men. Smith entertained no such limitations. Its goal, according to a mission statement, was “to develop fully as may be the powers of womanhood and furnish women with the means of usefulness, happiness and honor now withheld from them.”
The young women striving toward that goal—toward breaking new ground and setting new standards—were determined women, for most of the students entering the class of 1934 had tenacious minds, scholarly minds, the minds of women trained to learn and grow. But the mind of Julia McWilliams was distracted. She wasn’t goal-oriented, or particularly driven, or, for that matter, much of a student. Years later, Julia realized she was nothing more than “an utter adolescent” at the time she entered Smith; she was immature, totally unprepared for the college experience. “Somebody like me should not have been accepted at a serious institution,” she concluded. For Julia, academics were incidental to her real objective at Smith, which was having a nice environment in which to grow up.
With Tom Johnston, the man who broke Julia’s heart, New York, 1936 (Photo credit 3.1)
Vocational choice? That was about as far from her mind as the start of freshman classes. She picked up her pen and filled in the blank: “No occupation decided; marriage preferable.”
WHAT WAS JULIA doing here in the first place? All evidence suggests it was preordained. “There was never the slightest doubt in my mind that I would go to Smith,” Julia said. Caro had studied there as a member of the class of 1900, when a woman’s attending college “was rather a daring thing to do.” Less than 2 percent of the female population went on to higher education. From then on, Caro embraced her college experience in the core of her identity; she would always be a Smithie. It was her dream that Julia would follow suit. “And the day I was born,” according to Julia, “I was entered at Smith College.”
Location was also a factor. Smith was back East, in Northampton, Massachusetts, a stone’s throw from the Weston stronghold in Dalton. The family could keep an eye on Julia—and vice versa. Caro still had a financial stake in her father’s paper business, now being run by her brother, Philip. But Philip lived in the shadow of his domineering wife, Julia’s Aunt Theodora, whose tentacles extended deep into the ledgers of the Weston empire. Theodora was a scold, mercurial and belligerent, but mindful of the Family and its collective identity. Like it or not, Julia would be welcome at the Weston homestead during school holidays, when returning to Pasadena was inexpedient. She would be Caro’s emissary, her eyes and ears, in the shifting politics at Byron Weston Paper.
If Julia’s entrée to Smith was “my destiny,” as she put it, her transition there was anything but smooth. There were several factors that left he
r feeling unsettled, insecure. Even though she had been to an exclusive boarding school in California and should have felt in sync with her surroundings, Smith presented an altogether different picture. At Katharine Branson, Julia admitted, she “was never a brilliant student.” She “wasn’t particularly politically aware, hardly read the newspaper.” Her aptitude test scores were mediocre, at best. Now, arriving at Smith, she encountered women who were serious about their education—they were academically minded, worldly, what Julia saw as “real scholars”—and faculty she considered “really wonderful brains.” How, after skating through KBS for four years, was she supposed to compete at this level? Would she stumble through her classes, fall behind, and get bounced for poor grades like a third of Smith’s undergrads? Suddenly she was all the way across the country, by herself, with nobody to rely on, which made Julia feel frightened for the first time in her life.
Fortunately, Caro had contacted one of her Smith classmates who also had a daughter entering the class of ’34 and suggested that the two girls room together for their freshman year. Mary Case was a dark-haired, serious-looking young woman whose pale complexion owed much to the fact that she’d kept her head buried in a textbook throughout high school. The admissions committee at Smith considered her a prize catch, an academic standout who was loaded with potential and fit the Smith profile. She was smart as a whip, disciplined, and extremely ambitious. In fact, everything about Mary ran counter to Julia’s carefree approach. Even physically, they were an unlikely pair, as different as Mutt and Jeff. Mary, nicknamed Casey, was a squat, 160-pound dumpling who “had eaten too many hot fudge sundaes”; Julia, naturally slender, had grown so tall she was unable to fit on the standard-issue bed in the dorm. Despite the differences, said Julia, “We liked each other immediately.”