Eleanor has been feted like a returning prodigal ever since we got back from our North Cape cruise. A few weeks ago some of her friends got together and served her with a mock subpoena, charging her with monopolizing the attention of all the eligible young men in town. Her “trial” was held at the Manhole, a house shared by a half dozen promising young lawyers, one of whom undertook her defense. His name is Walter Burton and I gather he comes from a rural family of unknown origin somewhere in Maryland. However, in the year since he arrived here, he has earned the respect of some of the city’s most prominent lawyers, and Eleanor was thoroughly delighted with his eloquent defense. After she was “acquitted,” everyone at the trial was served dinner. All the men sharing the house contribute to the salary of a cook, and, according to Eleanor, an invitation to dine at the Manhole is one of the most sought-after in town.
I hope the two of you will be able to attend the dance I am giving in Eleanor’s honor a month after the Idlewild Ball. Traditionally, her escort for the ball, in this case the president of the club, would escort her on this occasion, but she insists on according the honor to her defender, Walter Burton. This is a complete breach of etiquette and I am unequivocally opposed to it, though I like the young man in question very much. However, she says she would rather cancel the party than spend it in the company of someone who bored her so I suppose I have no choice but to give my consent. I have persuaded her, however, to keep her decision private until after Idlewild. I do not want anything to jeopardize her formal introduction to Dallas society on the arm of the club president.
I am anxious for you to meet Nell Cunningham, the young woman Andrew is going to marry. She is a direct descendant of one of the first families of Virginia, and I cannot help being flattered that she has agreed to marry my son. I just hope he properly appreciates his good fortune.
They have set the date of their wedding for February 21. February is usually a slow month on the social calendar and Andrew felt a big wedding would be a welcome diversion for all his friends. Nell and her family would prefer a small wedding. They have only recently moved here from Virginia and do not know many people. Also, although their background is impeccable, I suspect that like many aristocrats their resources may be somewhat limited. So I have suggested the wedding reception be held at the country club at my expense. After all, the wedding of my only son represents a certain social obligation for a woman in my position, and I feel it is only fair for me to assume the financial responsibility for an event that will be enjoyed primarily by my friends and family.
Nell and her mother and father are the only members of her family living here. Her brother Craig is a costume designer in Hollywood. He is designing his sister’s wedding dress, and giving it to her as a wedding present. She showed me the sketch he sent from Hollywood and the dress is simply stunning.
You have not told me very much about Marian’s young man beyond the fact that all of you are very fond of him. I hope Marian will bring him to Eleanor’s dance and introduce him to us—and to Dallas.
Love,
Bess
November 10, 1935
Dallas
Dear Mr. Cunningham,
Though we have not been formally introduced, I have heard your sister speak of you so often I feel as if you are already part of the family. And your sketch of the wedding dress was all the introduction I could ask to your work.
Actually, it is your work that prompts this letter. My daughter, Eleanor, who is an artist in her own right (having studied painting in Italy, sculpture in Germany, and costume design in New York), is making her debut next week. At the end of the month I will be giving a dinner dance in her honor, and I would be very proud if she wore a Craig Cunningham original on this occasion. It is traditional for a debutante to wear her Idlewild gown again at her own party but my daughter is already flaunting tradition with her choice of escort so she might as well defy it in her dress.
Though I know you make a handsome living designing for films, I should think it would be to your advantage to develop a private trade as well. Surely it is unwise to depend solely on a profession as fickle as filmmaking for one’s livelihood. The women who will be attending my daughter’s dance are accustomed to paying a great deal of money for their clothes and I would be very happy to see someone so soon to be a member of my family profit from their extravagance.
I have on occasion purchased designer dresses in New York and I assume your prices are in the same range. However, I can afford to pay as much as any movie star, so do your best for my daughter.
Let me know at once if this proposition interests you and I will send measurements.
Sincerely,
Bess Steed Garner
February 2, 1936
Dallas
Mr. Harold D. Perkins
Editor
The Dallas Morning News
Dallas, Texas
Dear Hal,
I am distressed that you and your wife will be unable to attend my son’s wedding next week, but of course I understand that the newspaper conference comes first.
However, the wedding is the subject of this letter. I do not know how carefully you read The New York Times but surely you have noticed that the society section, in cases where both families are equally prominent, often uses a picture of bride and groom leaving the church in place of the usual bridal portrait. Your society editor and my close friend Totsie Fineman informs me this is not the policy of The Dallas Morning News, but I am enclosing pictures of my son and his prospective bride on the steps of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in the happy event that you decide to revise this policy before departing for the conference.
You might also suggest to your wife that those huge lilac bushes she planted as a border guard between our two houses would benefit from some judicious pruning. I would mention it to her myself but I never seem to see her.
Affectionately—as always,
Bess
July 18, 1936
Dallas
Mr. Walter Burton
The Manhole
4123 Amherst
Dallas, Texas
Dear Walter,
This letter is a formal apology for confronting you with an artichoke at dinner last night. No one should have to encounter his first artichoke in public and I am truly sorry for any embarrassment the experience may have caused you. However, I admired you for admitting so openly that you did not know what to do with it. To me education is a continuing admission of how much we do not know, and the more I see of the world, the more I realize how much I still have to learn.
I am very grateful for the happiness you have given my daughter in the past year, and I hope it will continue. She tells me the two of you have discussed marriage but you do not feel your financial position can support a proposal at this time. Caution is an admirable quality for a man in your position but, based on what I have seen of your character and ability in the past year, I would say your future in this community is assured. I would be very pleased to have you in the family, and my use alone of your legal services will assure you a substantial income. I have never had a lawyer I could consult freely, and I look forward to a professional relationship as well as a personal one.
I hope you and Eleanor will make an official announcement of your engagement soon and set a date for the wedding. Frankly, only a definite date in the immediate future can keep Eleanor at home. She has already written an art school in Vienna to inquire about their fall schedule. I have hidden her passport but she is threatening to apply for a replacement. Though I have twice brought her home from Europe, I might not be so successful the third time.
I would like to give you a corner lot I own on Mockingbird Lane as an engagement present and my wedding present will be the house we decide to build on it.
Devotedly,
Bess
June 20, 1937
Dallas
Mrs. Walter Burton
6824 Mockingbird Lane
Dallas, Texas
My darling,
>
Welcome home. I wanted a letter from me to be the first one you found in your mailbox when you returned from your honeymoon.
I spent the day after the wedding getting your house in order, putting away all your presents, making up your bed with your new monogrammed sheets, planting flowers around your front door to greet you on your return. I inspected every inch of the house and am well satisfied with it. The architect you chose made imaginative use of a limited space. You were right to insist on him, even though his fee seemed excessive to me at the time. It was wise of Walter to persuade you to delay the wedding until the house was completed. You would never have found an apartment with a double bathroom, and sharing a basin can create more friction in a marriage than sharing a bed.
I am glad now that you refused to go through with the big wedding I had planned and insisted on the small one at home. I will never again walk through my living room without seeing you in the exquisite dress you designed standing in front of the fireplace, with the sculpted angels you gave me for Christmas kneeling on the mantel, holding lilies in their clasped hands. In my mind they are praying for your happiness and each night now before I go upstairs I kneel there and add my prayer to theirs.
As we stood in the station waving until your train disappeared in the direction of New Orleans, Sam suddenly took me in his arms and announced we were leaving on a honeymoon of our own at the end of the week. In our marriage the usual order of things was reversed and Sam was a father first and then a husband. Now, with both my children married, we are husband and wife at last and already seeing each other through different eyes.
Sam has planned a wonderful trip by train through the Pacific Northwest and continuing by boat into Alaska, and to my delight and surprise, he insists on paying all our expenses. On all our previous trips we have shared costs, and of course I have paid for all the trips I have taken alone. I have no idea how much money he has. He always makes me sign our joint income tax return before any of the figures are filled in. However, I have a feeling he is on his way to becoming wealthy, and I look forward to sharing old age with him.
We will be gone all summer, so you and Walter will be able to begin married life without interference from in-laws. I could almost accuse Sam of planning this trip with that in mind, but whatever his motive, I’m glad we are going, and as soon as I seal this letter I will start packing my suitcase. So hello and good-bye.
All my love,
Mother
SEPTEMBER 3 1938
CIUDAD MONTE
MEXICO
MRS WALTER BURTON
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE HOSPITAL
DALLAS TEXAS
IF I HAD WINGS I WOULD BE THERE BUT MY HEART
TOOK FLIGHT ON HEARING OF SAFE ARRIVAL OF MY FIRST
GRANDCHILD WE ARE SAFE BUT STRANDED BY FLOODS
I ACHE TO SEE BABY
LOVE
MOTHER
SEPTEMBER 3 1938
CIUDAD MONTE
MEXICO
MR WALTER BURTON
SANDERS AND HARRIS LAW FIRM
210 MAIN STREET
DALLAS TEXAS
BAD CONNECTION MADE PHONE CONVERSATION IMPOS-
SIBLE STILL DO NOT KNOW IF GRANDCHILD IS GIRL OR
BOY WHATEVER IT IS PLEASE AMEND MY WILL SO IT
WILL INHERIT EQUALLY WITH MY CHILDREN I MAY NOT
GET OUT OF MEXICO ALIVE
LOVE
BESS
SEPTEMBER 3 1938
CIUDAD MONTE
MEXICO
BURTON BABY
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE HOSPITAL
DALLAS TEXAS
MY DARLING GRANDCHILD
AM DESOLATE THAT I WAS NOT IN DALLAS TO WITNESS
YOUR ARRIVAL BUT TAKE IT AS SIGN OF INDEPENDENT
SPIRIT THAT YOU DO NOT WAIT FOR ANYONE SAME
CAN BE SAID OF ME WE ARE GOING TO BE GREAT
FRIENDS I LOVE YOU ALREADY
GRANDMOTHER
September 7, 1938
Dallas, Texas
Dear Lydia and Manning,
I have just seen my first grandchild for the first time. At one week she already seems to know everything. She actually glared at me as if demanding to know why it took me so long to get here. I admitted she had the right to ask.
We were on the Pan American Highway headed for home on Monday, August 29, two weeks before the baby was due. Carefree, with no hint of what awaited us, we decided to stop for the night at Ciudad Monte. We drove to the best hotel only to find it surrounded by automobiles and restless, milling crowds. We discovered to our horror that heavy rainfall had flooded the rivers to the north of us. All bridges were down and there was no way to get through to Monterrey.
All the hotels in town were overflowing and we were sent to the dormitory of one of the biggest sugar mills in Mexico, where we were hospitably received by the owners, who happened to be Americans. We felt fortunate to have beds as the tourists who arrived after us had to sleep in their cars. The bridges could not be repaired until the waters receded, so we had no choice but to wait until the rivers that separated us from Monterrey were shallow enough to be forded.
We were stranded without any means of communication for several days. When telephone service was finally restored on Saturday, I learned that I had been a grandmother for three days. I could hear Walter telling me that Eleanor and the baby were both fine, but apparently he could not understand a word I was saying. I have never had a more frustrating conversation.
I was beside myself with anxiety when the governor of the state of Tampico came to my rescue. He appeared unheralded at our hotel, riding, not a white charger, but a huge road-digging machine which he said would get a limited number of us across the first river. I was the first to volunteer. Sam stayed behind with the car, waving dubiously as I climbed onto one of the lateral beams and crouched there. There were twenty of us seated in every conceivable spot on the machine when we left.
We forded the first river, then proceeded on foot over huge stones to the main channel where the current was very strong. There we got into hastily constructed flatboats and crossed to waiting cars in which we forded two more rivers before finally arriving in Victoria for the night. From Victoria we took a bus to the next river, then had to walk a plank, crawl over stones, and finally climb up a ladder to the one section of bridge still standing. We were then crowded into a much smaller bus and after fording another river, reached Monterrey.
In my haste to start for home, I had left my pocketbook containing my tourist card and most of my money in the car with Sam. I was carrying a small change purse in my pocket, which contained just enough for a second-class train ticket to Dallas with nothing left over for food or drink. During the past week while we were stranded in the sugar mill we had subsisted entirely on the crackers and canned goods we had been wise enough to store in the trunk of our car as emergency provisions. I thought I would never be able to look at another can of beans, but by the time I reached Monterrey I was so hungry I would have happily eaten the can itself.
The train was very crowded but I finally found a seat next to a Mexican woman with two crying babies. In halting Spanish I explained that I was on my way to Texas to see my first grandchild and I offered to hold one of her babies. She accepted gratefully and the baby was soon sleeping peacefully on my shoulder. As a means of thanking me, the woman offered me a banana from a large bunch she was carrying. I ate it so hungrily she quickly offered me another. Four bananas later, we were fast friends. I don’t believe she had ever seen a starving American tourist before. She talked to me the whole trip, unaware that I could understand only a fraction of what she was saying. My hunger had made me seem like a sister no matter what language I spoke.
When we got to the border and I had no tourist card to show the official, I broke into tears trying to explain what had happened. The official was trying to make me leave the train when my new friend began an eloquent defense. Something about a baby was all I could understand, but it seemed to satisfy him
. He gave me a paternal smile, patted the baby asleep in my arms, and let me continue on my way.
When I reached Dallas, Eleanor and the baby were just leaving the hospital. I drove home with them and for the second time in a week held a sleeping baby in my arms but this time it was my own granddaughter.
I am as exhausted as if I had given birth myself—and just as proud.
Love,
Bess
August 1, 1939
Dallas
Dear Mother Steed,
It seems very sad that we have had so little to say to each other in the last two decades. I know you have taken great pride in Lydia’s family and we were all thrilled when Marian gave birth to your first great-grandchild two years ago. But let me remind you that you have another great-granddaughter here in Dallas whom you have seen only once since she was born almost a year ago.
She is staying here with us for two weeks while her parents vacation in New Mexico. We would love to have you come for a visit and share in the fun of having her to ourselves without parental interference. She is just on the verge of learning to walk. In fact, she could do it today if she had any confidence in her own ability, but her parents have done nothing to encourage her, insisting that she will take her first step as soon as she is ready and not before. However, today I purchased an ingenious little harness with a long belt attached to the back. I stand behind her holding the belt and, secure in the knowledge that I am providing total support, she literally runs down the front walk into the waiting arms of her grandfather.
Forgive me for conferring the title of grandfather on a man who earned it only through marriage, but, never having had a child to call him father, Sam is doubly grateful for the role of grandfather. And just as my first marriage was cemented by the arrival of children, my second marriage has been surprisingly strengthened by the presence of a grandchild.
A Woman of Independent Means Page 23