Taking My Life

by Jane Rule

  The trip had its challenges. Dr. Pope was not easily mobile because she had suffered from polio as a young woman: she was not certain of her balance and crowds were often too difficult to manage because she wore leg braces and used elbow canes. Perhaps Rule’s own experience with “two grandmothers afflicted with severe arthritis and dependent on canes, walkers and wheelchairs,”17. and her own self-consciousness about her height would have rendered her more sensitive to the physical and psychological challenges of Dr. Pope. In writing the autobiography retrospectively, perhaps her own arthritis also gave her even greater insight. Although Dr. Pope’s “delight in everything [they] did” made her dependence on Rule easier and although she was “absolutely self-disciplined about any physical challenge,” even Dr. Pope felt the frustration at the loss of her own and her companion’s independence. When Rule did find time to be alone with Sargeant, the differences in their natures showed themselves: Sargeant was more publicly inhibited, whereas Rule was more reckless. Although Rule tried to be patient about the situation, she grew restless and “looked ahead only to the week Sargeant and [she] would have alone together.” But the heightening tensions between them were not greatly alleviated after Dr. Pope returned to North America, and Rule departed to France on her cycling trip with Ellen.

  The challenges of the language and the form of travel that Rule and Ellen had chosen proved to be too difficult. Upon arrival in Paris, they abandoned their bicycles and decided to walk, “miles and miles a day.” Eventually, they caught a train for Barcelona, and went on to Majorca, “Georges Sand and Chopin country.” Without her typewriter, which she could not strap to her bike and which was the “central prop of [her] ritual” of writing daily, her work was impeded. When they were joined by two young men, the strain of the summer finally took its toll. Rule decided she was obliged to leave on her own:

  I left because I was too tired to carry responsibility for anyone but myself. I left because I was under sexual pressure I didn’t want from a young man, in a growing complexity of a foursome I didn’t feel a real part of. I left because I really did want to write and couldn’t in those circumstances. I left because our money would not anyway have lasted very long now that we had given up our bicycles. I left because I was sick and frightened.

  At this point, Rule was nineteen. She had no sense of what else to do at this point but to return home, “the only uncommitting option.”

  Upon her return, Rule refused to respond to Smith’s demand that she adapt to heterosexuality, which closed the avenue of communication between them. Pregnant with her third child, Smith did several portraits of Rule, who stayed with her for a few days. Upon reflecting on this period, Rule came to appreciate fully the importance of her relationship with Sargeant, in whose presence she was “entirely happy” and with whom she could be unreserved and candid. Rule had grown into herself, both as a woman and artist. After leaving Smith, she returned to Mills and entered into a lively correspondence with Sargeant. They planned Rule’s third trip to England together, during which Sargeant would start her Master of Arts and Rule would write her first novel: “And, no, I wouldn’t invite the entire world to share it with us.” The plan came to fruition: on Rule’s twentieth birthday, her family gathered money to help pay for her coming year in England. Carlotta Packer paid for the rest. The following year, in “the cold winter flat in West Hampstead,” which Sargeant’s cousin had found for them, Rule “made [her] first real home, learned after a fashion to cook, to entertain friends, to live with a lover, and to write [her] first, unpublishable novel.”18. She learned, as she herself so evocatively observes in the concluding lines of Taking My Life, “to live with the baggage of my life, its rhythms of failure and rebirth.”

  Notes

  1. See Boxes 13 and 14, Jane Rule Fonds, University of British Columbia Archives.

  2. Jane Rule to Robert Weaver, May 12, 1981. Robert Weaver Fonds. MG31-D162, Container 4, File 27 (1957–1982). Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

  3. Undated letter Jane Rule to Robert Weaver. MG31-D162, Container 4, File 27 (1957–1982). Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. It is true that Rule frequently invoked aspects of her personal life or autobiographical experiences for the purposes of her fiction. For example, she notes in Taking My Life that she wrote a story called “In the Bosom of the Family,” based on an incident that occurs when Ellen Kay invites Rule to share a weekend with a professor (with whom Ellen is having an affair) and his family. She also suggests that the two young men she meets on a train in England and the subsequent time they pass together on Majorca are “described in some detail in This Is Not for You, but the motives of the two main characters are entirely fictional.” She observes that the family house in Eureka “where Aunt Etta spent the winter much less well … became one of the settings in my novel, Against the Season.”

  4. See Marilyn Schuster’s Passionate Communities: Reading Lesbian Resistance in Jane Rule’s Fiction, page 21.

  5. Jane Rule to “Tiff” (Timothy Findley), circa December 1994. MG31-D196, Container 144, File 38. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

  6. I am grateful to the executors of the Jane Rule Fonds for pointing out this fact to me in “From Notes on Linda Morra’s Manuscript.” They added that Jane Rule’s mother “came home from the hospital to the Gatehouse after Arthur was born, and the family, eventually including Jane, lived in the Gatehouse.”

  7. The executors of the Jane Rule Fonds noted that “South Fork was on the south fork of the Eel River, 11 miles north of Garberville on hwy 101 … The ranch was sold in 1952. hwy 101 was rerouted through the property several years later.”

  8. See also the article “Carlotta—A Pioneer Family Named It,” Humboldt Times, March 20, 1949, page 11, in which the author, Chet Schwarzkopf, notes that John M. Vance “started the town and named it after his daughter Carlotta.”

  9. St. Mary’s College was one of many colleges at which the U.S. Navy had established pre-flight training schools in response to the shortage of fighter pilots after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Between 1942 and 1946, the campus accepted navy cadets and officers who were temporarily housed in barracks. John Grennan, “Pipe Dream Fulfilled,” St. Mary’s Magazine Spring (2008), accessed May 13, 2011, http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/news-and-events/saint-marys-magazine/archives/v28/sp08/features/01.html. Also, I am using the notes provided by the executors of the Jane Rule Estate.

  10. I am grateful to David Anderson for pointing out this fact to me (and some other ideas throughout the course of his reading of the afterword). He referred me to the work of Catriona A.H. Mortimer-Sandilands, whose book This Is for You: Walks with Jane Rule, is currently being considered by ubc Press and whose current research is titled After the Fire, What? Jane Rule, Lesbian Politics, Environmental Ethics. He also shared ideas from his unpublished paper, titled “Impossible Bargains: Queer Rule in The Young in One Another’s Arms,” presented at a conference at the University of Victoria (Literatures of the West Coast) in October 2009. His paper was written from an ecocritical perspective.

  11. See Boxes 19, 32, 42 and 43, Jane Rule Fonds, University of British Columbia Archives.

  12. See also essays such as “Loving the Difficult,” “Refrain,” “Choosing Home,” “Much Obliged,” “Against Those Who Would Forget” and “Peanut Butter Summer,” which appear in Loving the Difficult; therein, Rule tracks her childhood experiences, her writing career and familial relationships.

  13. “About Castilleja School,” accessed May 13, 2011, http://www. castilleja.org/page.cfm?p=119.

  14. See also essays from Loving the Difficult, such as “Money” and “Things.”

  15. The website for the college states that “missionaries Cyrus and Susan Mills bought the Seminary in 1865 for $5,000, renamed it Mills College, and moved it in 1871 to its current 135-acre oasis. At the time, Oakland was a bustling metropolis of about 10,000.” See “About Mills,” accessed May 13, 2011, http://www.mills.edu/about/mission_and_history.php.

  16. For letters f
rom West to Rule, see Box 22, Jane Rule Fonds, University of British Columbia Archives.

  17. From “Notes on Linda Morra’s Manuscript,” as submitted to me by the executors of the Jane Rule Estate.

  18. Likely Rule is referring to the unpublished novel “Who Are the Penitent?” (typed manuscript, Box 11, File 1, Jane Rule Fonds, University of British Columbia Archives).

  Works Cited

  “About Castilleja School,” accessed May 13, 2011, http://www. castilleja.org/page.cfm?p=119.

  “About Mills.” Mills College, accessed May 13, 2011, http://www.mills.edu/about/mission_and_history.php.

  Anderson, David. “Impossible Bargains: Queer Rule in The Young in One Another’s Arms.” Unpublished conference paper. University of Victoria (Literatures of the West Coast), October 2009.

  Grennan, John. “Pipe Dream Fulfilled.” St. Mary’s Magazine, Spring (2008), accessed May 13, 2011, http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/news-and-events/saint-marys-magazine/archives/v28/sp08/features/01.html.

  Robert Weaver Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

  Rule, Jane. Against the Season. Kansas City, MO: Naiad, 1971.

  ———. Loving the Difficult. Sidney, BC: Hedgerow, 2008.

  ———. This Is Not for You. Kansas City, MO: Naiad, 1970.

  Schuster, Marilyn. Passionate Communities: Reading Lesbian Resistance in Jane Rule’s Fiction. New York: New York University Press, 1999.

  Schwarzkopf, Chet. “Carlotta—A Pioneer Family Named It.” Humboldt Times, March 20, 1949, page 11.

  Timothy Findley Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

  Commentary

  For the sake of clarification, explanations of places, persons, events, literary texts or other matters to which Rule alludes in her autobiography are provided below.

  Addams, Charles Born on January 7, 1912, Charles “Chas” Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist who is perhaps most renowned for creating the characters known as the Addams Family. His cartoons appeared in, among others, the New Yorker, Collier’s and TV Guide. He drew more than 1,300 cartoons, some of these published in Drawn and Quartered (1942), Monster Rally (1950) and Dear Dead Days (1959), and others in calendars and other forms of popular merchandise. His work has been famously characterized by macabre and black humour. He died on September 29, 1988.

  Child Ballads Rule relates how she had fainted spectacularly in class as she finished reciting, “And I will lie lay me down and bleed a while, / And then I will rise and fight again.” Rule is quoting from one of the 305 Child Ballads that were assembled largely from England and Scotland by Francis James Child. They were then published by Houghton Mifflin as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads in the late nineteenth century. Rule specifically cited a passage from Child Ballad number 167, titled Sir Andrew Barton or Andrew Bartin. Born in 1466, Sir Andrew Barton served as High Admiral of the Kingdom of Scotland, even as he was at turns described as a “pirate” or “privateer.” Although he had a letter of marque issued by the Scottish crown, which should have protected him from harm, he was beheaded in 1511 after a fierce battle with Sir Edward Howard and his brother.

  English-Speaking Union The English-Speaking Union, an international educational charity, was founded in 1918 by the journalist Evelyn Wrench and received in 1957 a Royal Charter, with Queen Elizabeth II as its patron. Its international headquarters are at Dartmouth House, in London, England. With approximately forty branches in the United Kingdom and more than fifty branches worldwide, the esu has several objectives, two of which are as follows: first, to connect and empower individuals across the globe by equipping these individuals with “communication skills, confidence, and networking opportunities” and, second, to draw attention to issues related to current affairs through activities such as conferences, exchange programs and public debates (esu.org).

  Godey’s Lady’s Book In papers Rule finds after Mother Packer’s death, her grandmother refers to childhood experiences that Rule discovers she has shared with her, despite the difference of years. Rule grew up reading old copies of her grandmother’s Godey’s Lady’s Book. Alternatively known as Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book, Godey’s Lady’s Book was published by Louis A. Godey in Philadelphia between 1830 and 1878, although the magazine did not cease publication well until 1898. It was most known for its fashion plates for women’s dress; by 1860, it had 150,000 subscribers.

  Madame Tussaud’s A wax museum established in London more than two hundred years ago, and named after Madame Tussaud, a Parisian woman who had learned to model wax likenesses under the tutelage of her mentor, Dr. Philippe Curtius.

  Milhaud, Darius (September 4, 1892–June 22, 1974) was a prolific French composer and teacher and a member of Les Six (Groupe des Six). His most popular work includes La Création du Monde, Scaramouche and Saudades do Brasil. He taught at Mills College at alternate years between 1947 and 1971.

  Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California Rule’s younger sister, Libby, was prone to ear infections, and once had to be taken by military ambulance to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, which was opened during the Second World War (in 1942) and closed in 1993.

  Petri, Egon (March 23, 1881–May 27, 1962) was a German-born classical pianist who had recorded with several labels, including Columbia Records. He had moved to Poland in 1927, escaped the day before the Germans invaded in September 1939, and moved to the United States, where he taught at Cornell University and then at Mills College. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1955.

  Powers model Mary Lily Rule, a much younger cousin of Jane’s father, ran away from the family farm to New York, where Grandfather Rule got her a job as a Powers model. John Robert Powers had established the first modelling agency in 1923 in New York City.

  Sarg, Tony Rule’s grandfather told her about his friend, Tony Sarg, who is likely Anthony Frederick Sarg (April 21, 1880–February 17, 1942), a German American puppeteer and illustrator, described as “America’s Puppet Master.”

  Steig, William Rule refers to her brother Arthur’s favourite Steig cartoon, which was captioned, “Whenever I’m a good guy, people walk all over me.” William Steig (1907–2003) was an American cartoonist who contributed regularly to the New Yorker. He first achieved fame by transforming the way cartoons were created at the magazine.

  USO shows In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt drew upon existing organizations—including the Salvation Army, Young Men’s Christian Association, Young Women’s Christian Association, National Catholic Community Services, National Travelers Aid Association and the National Jewish Welfare Board—to found the uso, the United Service Organizations. The focus of the uso was and continues to be the support of American troops and their families (uso.org).

  Vivien, Renée Born Pauline Mary Tarn on June 11, 1877, Renée Vivien was a well-cultivated and well-travelled British poet who wrote in French and followed the Symbolists’ writing practices. She was an ardent admirer of the Greek poet Sappho, and she thus translated her work into modern French and even tried to revive a women’s artist colony on Lesbos. Her poetry, much of it apparently autobiographical, explores paganism, feminism, love and androgyny; in one volume, Dans un coin de violettes (1908; In a Violet Garden), she explores her passion for a childhood friend, Violet Shillito, who died in 1901. Vivien also became renowned for her bohemian and lavish lifestyle, in part supported by the fortune she inherited from her father at the age of twenty-one. She was openly lesbian, and had an extended public affair with writer Natalie Clifford Barney, but more private ones with Kérimé Turkhan Pasha, the wife of a Turkish diplomat, and the Baroness Hélène de Zuylen, one of the Paris Rothschilds. Vivien died on November 18, 1909, at the age of thirty-two, from what seems to have been pneumonia.

  West, Mary Jessamyn After Donald Weeks left Mills College, other writers were invited to teach. One writer that came that year was Mary Jessamyn West (July 18, 1902–February 23, 1984), author of numerous stories and novels, including The Friendly Persuasion (1945). She helped to establis
h the Palmer Society in 1921.

  “The Whiffenpoof Song” Jane Rule wrote obscure, symbolic stories for her writing class at Mills College. One was about a man who raped sheep, and, for some time after, Rule was taunted with snippets from “The Whiffenpoof Song.” The Yale Whiffenpoofs were the oldest collegiate a cappella group, established in the United States in 1909. “The Whiffenpoof Song” was their most popular, based on a tune written by Tod Galloway.

  Page 1 of original handwritten manuscript for Taking My Life, circa 1980s

  Jane Rule Fonds, University Archives, University of British Columbia

  Page 1 of original typescript for Taking My Life, circa 1980s

  Jane Rule Fonds, University Archives, University of British Columbia

  Omitted Text

  In transcribing Jane Rule’s handwritten version of Taking My Life and then comparing it to her typescript, I realized that she had made several changes. I wished to reflect these changes—the text that Rule either omitted from or added to her typescript—for the purposes of academics or for those whose interests focus upon textual production. The passages to which changes were made follow below. Text that Rule was to omit from the typescript version of her autobiography is surrounded here by square brackets; text that she was to add to the typescript version is shown here in italics.

  I became such a problem to feed that my mother turned to the nursery school … I would have shamed her as well as myself if I’d let the school do what she hadn’t been able to.

  Arthur had an odd combination of talents. He was instinctively tactful, never made the blundering comments that were to become my trademark [I became famous for]; yet he couldn’t distinguish between what had happened and what he made up. [Perhaps both were his defences against a dangerous world.]