A Woman of Independent Means

by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

  I invited Richard and his son to be our guests for dinner the next night at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese where Dickens used to dine, but unfortunately they had a prior commitment. However, Andrew’s history master and his wife accepted the invitation readily, obviously grateful for an evening in the company of anyone over sixteen.

  Sunday Andrew accompanied Eleanor and me to services at Westminster Abbey on the condition he would never have to enter another cathedral on the entire trip. Sometimes I think back wistfully to our first trip to Europe when he never objected to anything I wanted to do. Whatever happened to that cheerful, agreeable little boy? I have lost him to life as surely as I lost my beloved Robin to death.

  Tomorrow we take the Golden Arrow express train to Paris. It has been fifteen years since my first visit. I never dreamed I would have to wait so long to see it again. I keep hoping Sam will be there to meet us. If I were traveling alone, I do not think I would miss him so much but I feel our marriage has made him responsible for the children—or is it that the children were responsible for our marriage? In any case he should be with them. The three of them are invariably interested—and bored —by the same things.

  However, my heart sings at the thought of seeing Paris again—with or without Sam.

  Much love,

  Bess

  July 16, 1928

  Chez Madame Sèze

  44 Avenue Wagram

  Paris

  Dearest Sam,

  Your telegram was waiting for us on arrival. We were happy to hear from you but it would have made us happier to see you. The children say they are no longer interested in seeing the Italian lakes without you to take them rowing.

  Our accommodations here are very pleasant and quite a bargain. Madame Sèze has placed her entire apartment at our disposal (even the drawing room where she sleeps on a daybed during our occupancy) for the sum of 125 francs per day (francs are four cents now). I hope you are impressed with our economy. A shipboard companion of mine from Atlanta, Georgia, is paying thirty-five dollars a day for a suite in a fashionable hotel.

  We had made reservations and paid in advance for a tour of Versailles the day after we arrived, realizing too late that it was Bastille Day. The travel agency was closed, naturally, and it was too late to get our money back, so there was no choice but to join the mob that stormed the palace.

  Paris, along with the rest of the continent, is suffering from a record heat wave, and Louis XIV would have been shocked to see the deplorable condition of his gardens. The grass is brown everywhere and the streams almost empty. Only the Grotto of Apollo looked cool and inviting, but the descendants of Robespierre soon spoiled even its quiet seclusion, filling the air with raucous laughter and the stench of garlic. I have never been more in sympathy with poor, bewildered Marie Antoinette, and I am thankful for the few happy moments she enjoyed playing shepherdess in her adorable hamlet. (I hope you are reading The Letters of Madame de Sévigné which I left on the bookshelf by your bed so that you may at least share our adventure in spirit.)

  We made an early return to the city and watched the dancing in the streets below from the comfortable perspective of our balcony. The Eiffel Tower was illuminated in the distance and I went to sleep feeling I had arrived at the center of the universe.

  All my love,

  Bess

  July 21, 1928

  Tours, France

  Dearest Dwight,

  It was so kind of you to escort us to the ship, and I cannot thank you enough for the foreign currency computer you tucked into my pocket as you kissed me good-bye. I do not mind traveling in a country where I cannot speak the language as long as I can understand the money.

  We have just concluded a strenuous three-day tour of the Loire Valley. To my delight Andrew and Eleanor have become fascinated by all the court intrigue contained within the walls of each chateau, and they have followed the checkered history of Catherine de Medici from one royal residence to another with as much interest as my laundress reads newspaper serials. They were thrilled to see the secret cabinet where she kept her poisons in a paneled room at the Château of Blois and applauded her audacity in banishing her husband’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, from the “dream palace” of Chenonceaux after his death and claiming it for her own. Though I cannot admire her I do envy her way of life. A woman of wit and intellect was much more appreciated in a royal court in Renaissance France than she is today in a living room in Texas.

  Tonight we are staying at a country inn that is very much to your taste. I wish you were waiting below to join us for dinner.

  My love,

  Bess

  August 5, 1928

  Amsterdam

  Dearest Sam,

  We allowed a week on our itinerary for Amsterdam, so we would have time to enjoy the Olympic Games, but we all wish we were staying longer.

  It is thrilling to see our flag raised when our athletes win. Unfortunately we will be leaving before the swimming finals but we were impressed by Crabbe’s perfect form in the semifinals. I hope his Australian competition will not get the better of him in the finals.

  We shared a sightseeing excursion with a group of Irish Olympic players, and one of them, a student of medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, was quite attentive to Eleanor. I invited him to join us for dinner and he came gladly. Unfortunately his team was defeated the next day—due largely to poor decisions by the referee, we felt.

  Andrew has missed his weekly tennis game with you, but he found plenty of partners here—unfortunately all better than he is.

  We miss you.

  Love,

  Bess

  August 25, 1928

  Villa d’Este

  Cernobbio, Italy

  Dearest Lydia,

  From the day I discovered Byron, I have dreamed of the Italian Lakes, but my first glimpse of Lake Como convinced me that there are times when even the most unrestrained imagination fails to match the artistry of nature.

  The enchantment of the setting was further enhanced by the unexpected appearance at our hotel here of my shipboard companion Richard Prince. He travels without an itinerary so is free to go wherever his mood takes him. I had furnished him with a copy of my itinerary when we parted in Paris, however, so I suspect he was not as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

  By happy coincidence we have adjacent rooms with balconies overlooking the lake. Last night we shared the spectacle of a sunset whose splendor was doubled by its reflection in the lake. How wise we would be to multiply all our pleasure in life through the simple act of reflection, allowing memory to serve as the mirror in which the original moment can be recreated at will. I feel with Wordsworth that an event “recollected in tranquility” has an intensity it often lacks in the present. My stay in Europe is at an end but I expect to make the trip many times in memory, unencumbered by children and baggage.

  Richard and I spent this morning rowing on the lake. Fortunately our children are happy in each other’s company and old enough to plan picnics without us. It is a delight—and a new experience for me—to spend time in the company of a man who is better educated than I am. Most of the American men I know have been too busy earning a living to pursue any aesthetic goals, and my friend freely admits he devoted his early years to acquiring a fortune. But he is just as rigorously devoting the rest of his life to enjoying it.

  His interests are unbounded and he approaches each new country as if it were a company he had decided to acquire. He studies its historical contribution and if he feels it merits his attention, he commits himself to learning the language. He is renting a villa in Fiesole this fall in order to attend the language institute in Florence. I have resolved to study Italian on my own when I return home, and we have sworn that the next time we meet we will converse only in the language of the country we are visiting.

  I have missed Sam on the trip but if he had been with me, I would never have gotten to know Richard Prince. It seems unreasonable to expect—or indeed even to want—to share every
experience in life with the same person. We are more complicated than that and capable of pledging lifelong devotion to any number of different people of different sex and age. Why does society restrict a man and a woman to only one such pledge per lifetime? I hope I will never break any promise once made, but if I were free and clear at this moment, I would never again promise my exclusive devotion to anyone.

  I trust you are not shocked by the feelings I am expressing. I can assure you they were foreign to me when I was married to your brother, though perhaps the passing years would have tested even that seemingly perfect relationship. I am now married to a man I love and respect but that does not mean I would not enjoy a similar relationship with other men.

  Sometimes I think the world would be a much more interesting place if on coming of age, everyone moved into a house of his own and shared his life with a variety of other people at mutually arranged times and places. Of course there are the children to consider, but I sometimes suspect monogamy is an invention of the male, designed to protect his exclusive claim to the children he fathers. Nature assigns no role to the father once conception takes place. It is a refinement of civilization to make the father an equal partner in the child-rearing process, and I wonder if this division of responsibility is in fact an improvement on the natural order of things. Any society depends on an acceptance of a twofold responsibility: to one’s self and to others. Perhaps it is to enforce the second that nature denies the male any physical ties to his children. Could it be that the male is not given a demonstrable claim on his own children in the hope that he will assume a spiritual responsibility for all children?

  Forgive me for this intellectual excursion into territory I have never dared explore in the past. But now that this physical journey is almost over, the only voyages ahead of me in the immediate future are in the mind, and in that area I am an intrepid traveler. But I trust that, like any traveler, I will enjoy my homecoming all the more because of the distance I have traveled in order to reach my point of departure.

  A bientôt,

  Bess

  September 20, 1928

  Dallas

  Dear Lydia,

  A state of armed truce has existed in our household since my return. Sam greeted me with the announcement that he had had me followed by a private detective from the time I left Paris. I was careful to avoid any mention of my friend Richard Prince in my letters to him, but it never occurred to me to censor the children’s letters home and apparently they described our friendship in sufficient detail to arouse Sam’s already suspicious nature.

  We had no sooner stepped off the train than Sam triumphantly presented me with evidence of adjacent rooms at the Villa d’Este. I was so enraged by his lack of trust I went to my room without a word in my own defense and stayed there for five days, admitting only the children and having my meals brought to me on a tray. On the sixth day a letter arrived for me from Richard Prince in Fiesole.

  Sam brought it to the door of my room and threatened to open it and read it aloud if I did not emerge at once. With all the dignity I could muster, I opened the door and demanded the letter. Sam finally agreed to relinquish it on the condition that any further correspondence between us would be subject to his scrutiny. I met his condition with one of my own: I would not reply to the letter if he would refrain from further accusations. He agreed, appearing grateful to have the matter closed, and that night, for the first time since our return, the dinner table was graced with my presence, if not my appetite.

  The children are back in school and I have begun my independent study of Italian. I should soon know enough to conduct a private correspondence with someone who will understand what my wayward heart is saying despite my woeful grammar.

  Ciao,

  Bess

  October 14, 1930

  Dallas

  Dearest Andrew,

  I am glad you are so happy at Yale. Your letters home do more than your diploma to convince me Choate did a good job of preparing you for college. I was especially touched by your note of gratitude to me for everything I have done to make you feel the equal of anyone in your class, no matter how impressive his family background. From now on, you will be measured on the basis of your own achievements and that is the only standard you must employ to judge others.

  I have some very sad news to report. Arthur Fineman died yesterday of a heart attack. He was only forty-five. Though he has been in poor health for the past year, his death came as a complete shock to all of us—but can be counted a casualty of the stock market crash as surely as any suicide. The sense of responsibility he felt toward his family, which would never have allowed him to take his own life, killed him in the end. He not only watched his past savings disappear, he foresaw little hope for future income from his chosen profession.

  I stopped trying to make sense out of the stock market some years ago and began to buy land, but Arthur continued to chide me and insist there was logic to the buying and selling that was his livelihood. When the crash came, he felt he had not only been lying to himself but also deceiving people who trusted him.

  You were too young to realize how much I profited from Arthur’s advice after your father died. He took the place of a husband at a time when I was very much alone in the world and even after each of us married someone else, his wise and cultivated presence continued to be an important part of my life. Life in Dallas will be desolate without him.

  I am buying a seat in his name in the new civic auditorium so that in spirit at least he will continue to be part of the performances that meant so much to him. My contribution carries with it the stipulation that the seat be reserved for me during the opera season. I cannot bear to think of attending alone, but neither can I imagine anyone else sitting beside me and visibly trembling at a piece of music the way he did. If there is indeed a choir of angels in heaven, I am sure Arthur is applauding even now.

  I think it would be very nice if you wrote to Totsie, not a letter of condolence—what a mournful phrase that is—just some acknowledgment that Arthur touched your life in a way no one else did. Try to describe some incident that will make him live for her again, if only for a moment. Life is our only defense against death. I know.

  All my love,

  Mummy

  April 16, 1931

  Dallas

  Dear Lydia,

  It was a joy to spend Easter with you in Denton. With Andrew at Yale and Eleanor getting ready to go to Vassar, I feel our life as a family is coming to an end—or at least changing form. How fortunate you and Manning are to be teaching where Marian is learning—to be joined in a continual process of give and take and spared the estrangement that so often occurs when a child starts college.

  I am giving an afternoon tea at the country club on May 10 in honor of Eleanor’s graduation from Hockaday. I hope you and Marian will be able to attend. I expect the occasion to receive full coverage in The Dallas News now that Totsie Fineman has become a society reporter. When she was first widowed, she refused to consider going back to work, feeling it would reflect unfavorably on Arthur’s provisions for her in his will. But I insisted she join us one night when our neighbors the Perkinses were here for dinner and she had a job before we had finished our lemon soufflé.

  I look forward to seeing you at the tea.

  Love,

  Bess

  September 10, 1931

  Dallas

  Mr. Richard Prince

  Greenhill Estate

  Atlanta, Georgia

  My dear Richard,

  I know you will be surprised to hear from me after a silence of three years. The letter you wrote me from Fiesole the week after we parted enabled me to relive more than once all the sunsets we shared. Forgive me for waiting so long to reply, but I was not in a position to provide you with the answer you wanted and anything less would have seemed a reproach to the tender expression of affection offered freely on your part and embraced wordlessly by me.

  I think of you often and of your handsome son
. When we met, he was planning to attend Princeton after two more years of prep school. My daughter, Eleanor, leaves next week for Vassar. I am sure she would enjoy seeing your son again, and I hope he will be pleasantly surprised to learn of her proximity.

  It would give me great pleasure to think our relationship could continue through our children. But whatever the future holds, the past survives, and souvenirs of my last trip furnish my memory more richly than my home.

  With abiding affection,

  Bess

  NOVEMBER 8 1931

  DALLAS

  ELEANOR STEED

  VASSAR COLLEGE

  POUGHKEEPSIE NEW YORK

  SHALL I SHIP YOUR BLUE CHIFFON FOR PRINCETON

  COTILLION PLEASE ADVISE IMMEDIATELY

  LOVE

  MOTHER

  NOVEMBER 15 1931

  DALLAS

  ELEANOR STEED

  VASSAR COLLEGE

  POUGHKEEPSIE NEW YORK

  BLACK VELVET HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE EVEN FOR

  PRINCETON BLUE CHIFFON ON ITS WAY

  LOVE

  MOTHER

  June 10, 1932

  Dallas

  Miss Eleanor Steed

  S.S. Statendam

  Pier 24

  New York City, New York

  My darling,

  How strange it feels to be saying “bon voyage” from Texas. In fact, how strange it feels to be saying “bon voyage” at all. I am used to being on the receiving end of such sentiments, bravely waving good-bye and writing warm letters of reassurance to my loved ones left at home. Now that I know what a bereft feeling it is to be left behind, I marvel that either of my husbands allowed me to travel to Europe without them.