Had She But Known

by MacLeod, Charlotte;

  “Here’s something you will keep down,” he told her in a voice of quiet authority. “It’s a hot broiled lobster.”

  For as long as she could remember, Mary had loathed the mere sight of a lobster. She’d never so much as touched one of the crawly creatures and she’d never wanted to. As her stomach began the too-familiar churning, she clenched her teeth and shook her head. Brother Tal wasn’t standing for that sort of nonsense. He sat down by her bedside, pried open her locked jaws, and kindly but firmly began feeding her the lobster, one tiny bite at a time.

  Even a churning stomach knew better than to try any funny stuff with the great C.C. That lobster went down and stayed down. With some hot food lying peacefully inside her, Mary began to feel better, and to develop a positive attitude toward lobster that she retained for the rest of her life. Even Dr. Tal couldn’t manage to fatten his new sister-in-law up, though. When her first child was born, she weighed only ninety-six pounds.

  On January 25, 1897, Stanley Marshall Rinehart turned thirty. Stanley Marshall Rinehart, Jr., was born August 17, just five days after his mother’s twenty-first birthday. At that time, doctors were all in favor of big babies. This one tipped the scale at nine pounds, which was fine for Junior but made delivery a nightmare for the slender young mother. Mary’s labor pains went on and on, and it wasn’t until she was close to delivering that somebody thought to drip a little chloroform on a towel and hold it under her nose. The agonies of childbirth were taken for granted as part of a woman’s natural function. The ancient doctrine that her travail was to be offered up as an expiation for the sin of Eve still lingered at the back of even the most enlightened minds.

  Three years later, in Freiburg, Germany, a preparation of morphine and scopolamine to become known as twilight sleep would be developed to ease the agony of childbirth. This great boon to parturient mothers did not, however, reach Pittsburgh in time to do Mary Rinehart any good. Alan came along in November of 1900 and Frederick, or Ted as he would always be known to the family, came two years after Alan. Ted didn’t come easily. Mary suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and had to be packed with ice for a wretchedly long time. There would be no more babies for her, nor any life insurance for some years because of her somewhat spectacular medical record.

  That she wouldn’t be able to bear any more children could not have been a source of deep mourning for Mary. What with her housekeeping, her husband’s medical practice, and three little boys already in the family, she had more than enough to keep boredom at bay. Ted in particular was not an easy child to rear. He developed a terrible case of whooping cough during his first year and ran up a record number of 110 spasms. This didn’t prevent him from developing at a faster rate than many boy babies do; by the time Ted had passed his second birthday he was walking well enough to escape his baby-sitter, invade the forbidden territory of his father’s office, and treat himself to a gulp from a bowl of 95 percent carbolic acid solution.

  His father was off on a house call, there was no time to fetch another doctor. Providentially, Mary remembered one of the few lectures for which she’d managed to stay awake during her nurses’ training. She thrust Ted into the kitchen sink and poured cider vinegar down his burning throat. The vinegar neutralized the carbolic acid and saved the child’s life. For weeks, however, an intubation set was kept on the table beside his crib in case his windpipe might threaten to close up and stop his breath forever.

  Even with a doctor and a nurse for parents, the Rinehart boys managed to catch all the popular childhood diseases of the time, plus a few of the more exotic ones. These temporary setbacks didn’t slow them down much. They played, they ran, they jumped, they fell, they skinned their knees. Mary spent many an evening darning the holes in their long black stockings. Sliding down the stair rail, Stanley Junior fell off and broke his arm. Ted threw a baseball bat and broke Alan’s nose. Alan got into his mother’s button box. The following day, Stanley Junior regaled a waiting room full of patients with the story of how Alan had swallowed some shoe buttons and how his mother had got them back.

  Young Stanley caught diphtheria and gave it to his mother; Dr. Rinehart had to hire a nurse for her. While Mary was convalescing, the nurse mentioned that Munsey’s magazine was asking for original poems. Why didn’t Mrs. Rinehart try writing one? Remembering her early ambitions and not being up to much else just then, Mary wrote two, fumigated them in the oven, and mailed them off. She was thunderstruck to receive not only a letter of acceptance but a check for twenty-two dollars. It might be fun to try again sometime, she thought. Once she was up and back on the job though, Mary found her muse less amenable to being wooed.

  In 1898, the Rineharts had moved from their undistinguished honeymoon home on Western Avenue to a larger dwelling in the same neighborhood, three stories high with a center entrance. Having the doctor’s office on one side of the hall, separate from the family quarters, was a major improvement because Stanley’s practice was thriving. Since 1894 he had also been medical inspector for Allegheny County, which brought in a little extra money. He and Mary were learning to refer to their hired girl as a maid, which didn’t make the housekeeping any easier but did add a touch of class.

  At least Mary had been relieved of the task of making out the quarterly bills. The doctor’s accountant, by an interesting coincidence, turned out to be the son of a patient whom Mary had nursed at the hospital. Despite having fallen ten stories, the father had vowed he was going to survive, and he did. By now, though, ten stories didn’t seem so much to Mary. The nursery and the master bedroom were on the third floor, the only telephone was on the first; between tending the children and taking Stanley’s calls, she climbed that far and often a good deal farther every day.

  Mary also helped in the office when her husband needed an extra pair of hands to assist in a minor surgical operation or just to hold the patient steady. One of these involved a big sailor who wore the name Nellie tattooed over his heart even though that fickle organ had by now been passed along to a new sweetheart. Having Nellie removed from his chest nearly cost the not-so-brave Jack Tar a fainting spell, but Mary and her trusty ammonia bottle pulled him through the crisis.

  By then, the Rineharts might possibly have been able to afford a nanny for the children but Mary wouldn’t hear of that. While she’d never felt much enthusiasm for other people’s offspring, she absolutely doted on her own. Caring for the boys was sheer delight, at least part of the time. Dr. Rinehart was a great believer in fresh air and exercise, and the park where Mary had learned to ride her bicycle underwater was not far away. Even on cold days, she got her three little boys into their hats, coats, mittens, and long buttoned leggings and took them to see the iron deer in the grass and the swans in the lake. The one-armed policeman was no longer around to warn them off the grass, but Mary was too well trained not to keep her sons on the macadam paths.

  Mary was also strict about the children’s meals. They ate in the nursery, early and punctually. She carried up the trays herself. Perhaps this was her antidote for having to play guessing games with Stanley’s dinners. Many a lovingly prepared meal dried up in the oven while one of those well-dressed patients from the expensive side of town lingered in the doctor’s office, dawdling over her symptoms. There was one young woman who came to the office in a blue tailor-made suit that fairly tore at the heartstrings. Mary vowed that if she ever got her hands on enough spare money, she would buy one like it. With her first significant earnings, she did precisely that.

  Diamond Jim Brady is said to have remarked of a certain opulent-appearing Floradora Girl, “There’s deception behind that bust.” So it was with Mary Roberts Rinehart’s new suit. She’d made the tailor stiffen the bodice with crinoline in the right places and proportions, even if this did mean losing her figure when she took it off. Under the suit she wore the mandatory boned corset and rustling taffeta petticoat. Attached to her skirt band was a chatelaine to which she hooked her purse, her watch, her door key, and various other odds and ends. Also i
ncluded was a contrivance to hold up the wearer’s train at such times as she might need both hands free for some other purpose, such as snatching a too-fearless little boy out of a puddle or away from a threatening swan.

  What with all their regular chores, plus medical emergencies and bedtime stories, Mary and Stanley didn’t get out much by themselves. They’d been married for six years or so before they at last managed to see a play. Mary still had to face too many evenings alone, but she’d found a more diverting and profitable way to spend the time than sewing on buttons and darning black stockings.

  CHAPTER 11

  A Full Life Gets Fuller

  Counting those three short stories she’d sold for a dollar each when she was fifteen, plus the two oven-baked poems she’d composed on her sickbed (one of these taking the mickey out of medicine all the way from Allopathy to the Water Cure and the other, of all things, spoofing the detective story), Mary had already earned twenty-five dollars by her writing. This was an amount not to be sneezed at; it was the equivalent of five office visits and ten house calls, or one bouncing baby! A young wife with lonesome hours on her hands and a penchant for blue tailor-mades might do well to try her luck again.

  On the evidence thus far, verse seemed the way to go. Mary rattled out rhymes by the ream, made a few more sales, earned a few more dollars. She put together a small book of verses for children, took the tedious train journey to New York, wasted a day trudging from one publisher to another, came home, and tried a short story. According to Jan Cohn’s meticulously researched chronology in An Improbable Fiction, Mary Roberts Rinehart sold nine poems, two short stories, and an article on housekeeping during 1904. Altogether, she earned something like $100 that year.

  Between the practice and the children, it was hard to get out in the evenings, but Mary and the doctor were not entirely without a social life. They were learning to play an odd new card game that was gaining in popularity among the smart set. It was called bridge; two of Stanley’s friends, another doctor and a lawyer, made up a weekly foursome with him and Mary.

  An article that appeared in the Pittsburgh Bulletin November 27, 1909, described how Mary, when she was still an embryo writer, had tried to read her work in progress to the men. According to the reporter, the men had all stood up on their chairs and chattered at the tops of their voices to drown her out.

  That a young gentlewoman, a cherished wife and without doubt a gracious hostess, could actually have been thus rudely treated by a loving husband and two guests of the professional class seems hardly credible. If it was true, the charitable conclusion is that they’d each had a beer too many.

  Of course they all had to pretend that the evening’s episode was just a jolly jape, but neither Stanley nor Mary could have enjoyed it. He must have felt embarrassed and somehow demeaned. For Mary, having found her métier and seeing her early effort ridiculed in this manner would have been tantamount to hearing her adored babies derided as ugly brats. But she was not about to quit, and she gained a sweet revenge some weeks later when she showed her erstwhile hecklers a publisher’s check for thirty-four dollars, equal to nine office visits and a second bouncing baby, or a tasteful assortment of wills, deeds, title searches, and perhaps even a very minor lawsuit.

  Despite Mary’s small triumphs in the literary field, life went on as usual. Perhaps she’d picked up a signal from that too-revealing episode at the bridge table. Anyway, she made it a strict policy never to work at her writing while her husband was at home. Mary decided that her time then had better be his time; she maintained this dotingly uxorious attitude for as long as Stanley Rinehart lived. At least she said she did, and perhaps she believed it. Certainly in the early 1900s, her writing was still regarded as just a sometime hobby. Mrs. Rinehart the doctor’s wife had many other things to take up her time. For instance, Olive was getting married, at a high-noon wedding in the same church where Mary had been a bride. As the organist began the wedding march and an expectant hush fell over the assembled guests, young Stanley piped up, wondering at the top of his voice when they’d be serving the ice cream.

  These were prosperous times, and lots of people were speculating in the stock market. The Rineharts tried their luck and did quite well. The household now boasted two maids and a “Buttons,” a young boy in a spruce, many-buttoned uniform whose main function it was to open the door for incoming patients and let them out again after they’d seen the doctor. There were other small luxuries. One day Mary came down to dinner and found a miniature velvet-covered box at her place. In it was a sunburst brooch, very small but exquisitely designed and set with genuine diamonds. She was ecstatic.

  To put the frosting on the cake, Mary and Stanley were going to New York on a pleasure trip. With Olive married and gone, Cornelia Roberts had moved into a flat by herself, and was quite willing to look after her grandchildren while her daughter and son-in-law were on the town. The young couple had a marvelous two days. On the third, they stood aghast in the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange, watching a crowd of speculators go into total panic as stock prices plummeted. By closing time, the Rineharts, who must have committed the folly of buying on margin, were not only wiped out of the market but were also $12,000 in the hole.

  They went back to Pittsburgh broke and worried. How could they possibly pay off such a debt? Mary was already scheduled for a minor gynecological operation. As soon as she was able to leave the hospital, she dismissed the “Buttons” and the less powerful of her two housemaids and went back to being a woman of all work. Besides the children and the telephone, she took care of the two top floors. On Mondays and Tuesdays, when the sturdy maid was totally occupied with the washing and ironing, Mary had to manage the entire house.

  Stanley had by now become Allegheny’s city physician as well as county health inspector. His practice had grown to the limit of his capacity. He couldn’t raise his fees, so there was just no way to increase his income beyond its already high level. Economizing seemed their only recourse. Despite his evening house calls and frequent emergencies, Stanley offered to tend the children on alternate nights so that Mary would stand a chance of getting a good night’s sleep now and then. Ted was recovering well from his acid burns but adequate nourishment was still a problem. They were giving him warm milk every two hours throughout the night; he was very punctual about letting the parent on duty know when it was time to heat up another bottle. Mary retained a tender memory of her husband standing straight and valiant in his pajamas with a squalling baby on one arm, warming a saucepan of milk over a gas bracket.

  Mary did think of trying to earn a little extra money by writing but fatigue overcame the urge until one night her husband came home with a weird tale. He’d been to see a patient, a family man suffering from incipient tuberculosis. During the previous evening, one of the patient’s children had knocked a lighted oil lamp off the table. Trying to grab the lamp before it smashed and started a fire, the man had hit his head and knocked himself unconscious. The blow must have reactivated an old injury. By the time he came to, the man had regressed to his youth, when he’d been struck on the head in a railroad accident.

  The man didn’t recognize his wife—he thought she was merely a strange woman who’d been kind enough to help him. He laughed at her for claiming the children were his own. When she handed him a mirror, he was thunderstruck by the visage it reflected. Later, when he was brought to Dr. Rinehart’s office on a trolley car, he claimed he’d never seen one before. This true story had a sad conclusion. Eventually, unable to cope with what had happened, the man abandoned the family from whom he had become so pathetically alienated and vanished. Nobody ever found out what became of him.

  For Mary, however, the outcome was far different. Here was the spur she’d needed to get her started writing again, a gripping tale simply begging to be set down on paper. She dashed it off that same evening, changing names and details to make the protagonists unrecognizable and giving the story a happy ending. The next day, she hired a neighborhood gir
l to typewrite her handwritten draft, and sent off the typescript to Munsey’s magazine.

  As if her workload at home were not enough, Mary had taken on some volunteer nursing. One of her in-laws, a young woman who had just borne a child, was now desperately ill; Mary had gone to serve as relief so that the nurse on duty could get some sleep. She was busy in the darkened sickroom, with the ghastly stench of septicemia poisoning the air and the patient hovering on the edge of the Great Beyond, when Dr. Rinehart tiptoed in. He handed her a letter. Bob Davis, editor of Munsey’s, would be happy to publish Mrs. Rinehart’s story and sincerely hoped she would favor him with more of them. A check for thirty-four dollars was enclosed. Here was a doubly happy ending: The patient recovered and the Rinehart finances began to show a slight upturn.

  Only a tiny percentage of published fiction writers have ever been able to support themselves solely by their output. Of those, an even smaller fraction have attained financial heights. The vast majority either live with a supportive wage earner or work for money at some other job and write when they can find the time. This is what Mary Rinehart was doing: running her house, answering the phone, nursing when needed, taking the boys for their afternoon walks, perhaps dashing off a sentence or two during such off moments as she could snatch during the day. Those evenings when Stanley was out seeing patients and the boys were abed became her real writing times. She was never at a loss for ideas. She worked plots out in her mind while she went about her daytime chores. Getting them down on paper was a race between her head and her hand.

  Mary’s voluminous and indiscriminate reading, particularly that chestful of dime novels she’d plowed her way through in Cousin Maggie’s kitchen back on the farm, served her in good stead now. Since she’d never been taught how to construct a story, she imitated what she’d read, snatching up oddments from the well of subconscious memory and weaving them into pastiches, dashing off wild yarns at a rate of speed quite as fantastic as their contents.