The Log Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography - Unknown
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THE LOG-CABIN LADY
An Anonymous Autobiography
PREFACE
The story of The Log-Cabin Lady is one of the annals of America. It is
a moving record of the conquest of self-consciousness and fear through
mastery of manners and customs. It has been written by one who has not
sacrificed the strength and honesty of her pioneer girlhood, but who
added to these qualities that graciousness and charm which have given
her distinction on two continents.
I have been asked to tell how the story of The Log-Cabin Lady came to be
written. At a luncheon given at the Colony Club in 1920, I was invited
to talk about Madame Curie. There were, at that table, a group of
important women.
When I had finished the story of the great scientist, whose service to
humanity was halted by lack of laboratory equipment, and of the very
radium which she had herself discovered, one guest asked: "Why do you
spend your life with a woman's magazine when you could do big work like
serving Madame Curie?" "I believe," I replied, "that a woman's magazine
is one of the biggest services that can be rendered in this country."
My challenge was met with scorn by one of the women upon whose education
and accomplishments a fortune had been spent. "It is stupid," she said,
"to print articles about bringing up children and furnishing houses,
setting tables and feeding families--or whether it is good form for the
host to suggest another service at the dinner table."
"There are twenty million homes in America," I answered. "Only eight
per cent of these have servants in them. In the other ninety-two per
cent the women do their own housework; bring up their own children, and
take an active part in the life and growth of America. They are the
people who help make this country the great nation that it is."
After luncheon one of the guests, a woman of great social prominence,
distinguished both in her own country and abroad, asked me to drive
downtown with her. When we entered her car she said, with much
feeling--"You must go on with the thing you are doing."
Believing she referred to the Curie campaign, I replied that I had
committed myself to the work and could not abandon it. "I was not
referring to the Curie campaign," she replied, "but to the Delineator.
You are right; it is of vital importance to serve the great masses of
people. I know. It will probably surprise you to learn that when I was
fourteen years old I had never seen a table napkin. My family were
pioneers in the Northwest and were struggling for mere existence. There
was no time for the niceties of life. And yet, people like my family
and myself are worth serving and saving. I have known what it means to
lie awake all night, suffering with shame because of some stupid social
blunder which had made me appear ridiculous before my husband's family
or his friends."
This was a most amazing statement from a woman known socially on two
continents, and famed for her savoir faire. There were tears in her
eyes when she made her confession. She was stirred by a very real and
deep emotion. It had been years, she said, since the old recollections
had come back to her, but she had been moved by my plea for service to
home women and to the great mass of ordinary American people.
She told me that while living abroad she had often met American
girls--intelligent women, well bred, the finest stuff in the world--who
suffered under a disadvantage, because they lacked a little training in
the social amenities.
"It has been a satisfaction and a compensation to me," she added, "to be
able sometimes to serve these fellow country-women of mine."
And right there was born the idea which culminated in the writing of
this little book. I suggested that a million women could be helped by
the publishing of her own story.
The thought was abhorrent to her. Her experience was something she had
never voiced in words. It would be too intimate a discussion of herself
and her family. She was sure her relatives would bitterly oppose such a
confession.
It took nearly a year to persuade this remarkable woman to put down on
paper, from her recollections and from her old letters home, this simple
story of a fine American life. She consented finally to write fragments
of her life, anonymously. We were pledged not to reveal her identity.
A few changes in geography and time were made in her manuscript, but
otherwise the story is true to life, laden with adventure, spirit and
the American philosophy. She has refused to accept any remuneration for
the magazine publication or for royalties on the book rights. The money
accruing from her labor is being set aside in The Central Union Trust
Company of New York City as a trust fund to be used in some charitable
work. She has given her book to the public solely because she believes
that it contains a helpful message for other women, It is the gracious
gift of a woman who has a deep and passionate love for her country, and
a tender responsiveness to the needs of her own sex.
MARIE M. MELONEY.
September 1, 1922.
THE LOG-CABIN LADY
I.
I was born in a log cabin. I came to my pioneer mother in one of
Wisconsin's bitterest winters.
Twenty-one years later I was sailing for England, the wife of a diplomat
who was one of Boston's wealthy and aristocratic sons.
The road between--well, let it speak for itself. Merely to set this
story on paper opens old wounds, deep, but mercifully healed these many
years. Yet, if other women may find here comfort and illumination and a
certain philosophy, I am glad, and I shall feel repaid.
The first thing I remember is being grateful for windows. I was three
years old. My mother had set me to play on a mattress carefully placed
in the one ray of sunlight streaming through the one glass window of our
log cabin. Baby as I was, I had ached in the agonizing cold of a
pioneer winter. Lying there, warmed by that blessed sunshine, I was
suddenly aware of wonder and joy and gratitude. It was gratitude for
glass, which could keep out the biting cold and let in the warm sun.
To this day windows give me pleasure. My father was a school-teacher
from New England, where his family had taught the three R's and the
American Constitution since the days of Ben Franklin's study club. My
mother was the daughter of a hardworking Scotch immigrant. Father's
family set store on ancestry. Mother's side was more practical.
The year before my birth these two young people started West in a
prairie schooner to stake a homestead claim. Father's sea-man's chest
held a dictionary, Bancroft's History of the United States, several
books of mathematics, Plutarch's Lives, a history of Massachusetts,
a leather-bound file of Civil War records, Thackeray's "Vanity Fair",
Shakespeare in two volumes, and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." My mother
took a Bible.
I can still quote pages from every one of those books. Until I was
fourteen I saw no others, except a primer, homemade, to teach me my
letters. Because "Vanity Fair" contained simpler words than the others,
it was given me first; so at the age of seven I was spelling out pages
of the immortal Becky.
My mother did not approve, but father laughed and protested that the
child might as well begin with good things.
After mother's eighth and last baby, she lay ill for a year. The care
of the children fell principally on my young shoulders. One day I found
her crying.
"Mary," she said, with a tenderness that was rare, "if I die, you must
take care of all your brothers and sisters. You will be the only woman
within eighteen miles."
I was ten years old.
That night and many other nights I lay awake, trembling at the
possibility of being left the only woman within eighteen miles.
But mother did not die. I must have been a sturdy child; for, with the
little help father and his homestead partner could spare, I kept that
home going until she was strong again.
Every fall the shoemaker made his rounds through the country, reaching
our place last, for beyond us lay only virgin forest and wild beasts.
His visit thrilled us more than the arrival of any king to-day. We had
been cut off from the world for months. The shoemaker brought news from
neighbors eighteen, forty, sixty, even a hundred and fifty miles away.
Usually he brought a few newspapers too, treasured afterward for months.
He remained, a royal guest, for many days, until all the family was
shod.
Up to my tenth birthday we could not afford the newspaper subscription.
But after that times were a little better, and the Boston Transcript
began to come at irregular intervals. It formed our only tie with
civilization, except for the occasional purely personal letter from
"back home."
When I was fourteen three tremendous events had marked my life: sunlight
through a window-pane; the logrolling on the river when father added two
rooms to our cabin; and the night I thought mother would die and leave
me the only woman in eighteen miles.
But the fourth event was the most tremendous. One night father hurried
in without even waiting to unload or water his team. He seemed excited,
and handed my mother a letter. Our Great-Aunt Martha had willed father
her household goods and personal belongings and a modest sum that to us
was a fortune. Some one back East "awaited his instructions." Followed
many discussions, but in the end my mother gained her way. Great-Aunt
Martha's house goods were sold at auction. Father, however, insisted
that her "personal belongings" be shipped to Wisconsin.
After a long, long wait, one day father and I rose at daybreak and rode
thirty-six miles in a springless wagon, over ranchmen's roads ("the
giant's vertebrae," Jim Hill's men called it) to the nearest express
station, returning with a trunk and two packing cases. It was a solemn
moment when the first box was opened. Then mother gave a cry of
delight. Sheets and bedspreads edged with lace! Real linen pillowcases
with crocheted edgings. Soft woolen blankets and bright handmade
quilts. Two heavy, lustrous table-cloths and two dozen napkins, one
white set hemmed, and one red-and-white, bordered with a soft fringe.
What the world calls wealth has come to me in after years. Nothing ever
equaled in my eyes the priceless value of Great-Aunt Martha's "personal
belongings."
I was in a seventh heaven of delight. My father picked up the books
and began to read, paying no attention to our ecstasies over dresses and
ribbons, the boxful of laces, or the little shell-covered case holding a
few ornaments in gold and silver and jet.
We women did not stop until we had explored every corner of that trunk
and the two packing boxes. Then I picked up a napkin.
"What are these for?" I asked curiously.
My father slammed his book shut. I had never seen such a look on his
face.
"How old are you, Mary?" he demanded suddenly.
I told him that I was going on fifteen.
"And you never saw a table napkin?"
His tone was bitter and accusing. I did n't understand--how could I?
Father began to talk, his words growing more and more bitter. Mother
defended herself hotly. To-day I know that justice was on her side.
But in that first adolescent self-consciousness my sympathies were all
with father. Mother had neglected us--she had not taught us to use
table napkins! Becky Sharp used them. People in history used them.
I felt sure that Great-Aunt Martha would have been horrified, even in
heaven, to learn I had never even seen a table napkin.
Our parents' quarrel dimmed the ecstasy of the "personal belongings."
From that time we used napkins and a table-cloth on Sundays--that is,
when any one remembered it was Sunday.
Great-Aunt Martha's napkins opened up a new world for me, and they
strengthened father's determination to give his children an education.
The September before I reached seventeen, we persuaded mother to let me
go to Madison and study for a half year.
So great was my eagerness to learn from books, that I had given no
thought to people. Madison, my first town, showed me that my clothes
were homemade and tacky. Other girls wore store shoes and what seemed
to me beautifully made dresses. I was a backwoods gawk. I hated myself
and our home.
With many cautions, father had intrusted eighty dollars to me for the
half year's expenses. I took the money and bought my first pair of
buttoned shoes and a store dress with nine gores and stylish mutton-leg
sleeves! It was poor stuff, not warm enough for winter, and, together
with a new coat and hat, made a large hole in my funds.
I found work in a kindly family, where, in return for taking care of an
old lady, I received room and board and two dollars a week. Four hours
of my day were left for school.
The following February brought me an appointment as teacher in a
district school, at eighteen dollars a month and "turnabout" boarding in
farmers' families.
The next two years were spent teaching and attending school in Madison.
When I was twenty, a gift from father added to my savings and made
possible the realization of one of my dreams. I went East for a special
summer course.
No tubes shuttled under the Hudson in those days. From the ferry-boat
I was suddenly dazzled with the vision of a towering gold dome rising
above the four and five-story structures. The New York World building
was then the tallest in the world. To me it was also the most
stupendous.
Impulsively I turned to a man leaning on the ferry-boat railing beside
me. "Is n't that the most wonderful thing in the world?" I gasped.
"Not quite," he answered, and looked at me. His look made me
uncomfortable. I could have spoken to any stranger in Madison without
embarrassment. It took me about twenty years to understand why a plain,
middle-aged woman may chat with a strange man anywhere on earth, while
the same conversation cheapens a good-looking young girl.
That summer I met my future husband. He was doing research work at
Columbia, and we ran across each other constantly in the library. I
fairly lived there, for I found myself, for the first time, among a
wealth of books, and I read everything--autobiographies, histories, and
novels good and bad.
Tom's family and most of his friends were out of town for July and
August. I had never met any one like him, and he had never dreamed of
any one like me. We were friends in a week and sweethearts in a month.
Instead of joining his family, Tom stayed in New York and showed me the
town. He took me to my first plays. Even now I know that "If I Were
King" and "The Idol's Eye", with Frank Daniels, were good.
One day we went driving in an open carriage--his. It was upholstered in
soft fawn color, the coachman wore fawn-colored livery, and the horses
were beautiful. I was very happy. When we reached my boarding house
again, I jumped out. I was used to hopping from spring wagons.
"Please don't do that again, Mary," reproved Tom, very gently. "You
might hurt yourself." That amused me, until a look from the coachman
suddenly conveyed to me that I had made a _faux pas_. Not long after I
hurried off a street car ahead of Tom. This time he said nothing, but I
have not forgotten the look on his face.
Over our marvelous meals in marvelous restaurants Tom delighted to get
me started about home. Great-Aunt Martha's "personal belongings" amused
him hugely. He never tired of the visiting shoemaker, nor of the
carpenter who declared indignantly that if we wore decent clothes we
wouldn't need our bench seats planed smooth. But some things I never
told--about the table napkins, for instance.
We were married in September. Our honeymoon we spent fishing and
"roughing it" in the Canadian wilds. I felt at home and blissful.
I could cook and fish and make a bed in the open as well as any man.
It was heaven; but it left me entirely unprepared for the world I was
about to enter.
Not once did Tom say: "Mary, we do this [or that] in our family." He
was too happy, and I suppose he never thought of it. As for me, I
wasted no worry on his family. They would be kind and sympathetic and
simple, like Tom. They would love me and I would love them.
The day after we returned from Canada to New York I spent looking over
Tom's "personal belongings"--as great a revelation as Aunt
Martha's. His richly bound books, his beautiful furniture, his
pictures--everything was perfect. That night Tom made an announcement:
"The family gets home to-night, and they will come to call to-morrow."
"Why don't we go to the station to meet them?" I suggested.
To-day I appreciate better than I could then the gentle tact with which
Tom told me his family was strong on "good form", and that the husband's
family calls on the bride first. My husband's family came, and I
realized that I was a mere baby in a new world--a complicated and not
very friendly world, at that. Though they never put it into words, they
made me understand, in their cruel, polite way, that Tom was the hope of
the family, and his sudden marriage to a stranger had been a great
shock, if not more.
The beautiful ease of my husband's women-folk filled me with admiration
and despair. I felt guilty of something. I was queer. Their voices,
the intonation, even the tilt of their chins, seemed to stamp these new
"in-laws" as aristocrats of another race. Yet the same old New England
stock that sired their ancestors produced my father's fathers.
Theirs had stayed in Boston, and had had time to teach their children
grace and refinement and subtleties. Mine fought for their existence in
a new country. And when men and women fight for existence life becomes
very simple.
I felt only my own misery that day. Now I realize that the meeting
between Tom's mother and his wife was a mutual misery. I was crude. No
doubt, to her, I seemed even common. With every one except Tom I seemed
awkward and stupid. Poor mother-in-law!
When she rose to go, I saw her to her carriage. She was extremely
insistent that I should not. But this was Tom's mother, and I was
determined to leave no friendly act undone. At home it would have been
an offense not to see the company to their wagon. Even in Madison we
would have escorted a caller to his carriage.
Again it was the coachman who with one chill look warned me that I had
sinned.
Before Tom came home that afternoon he called on his mother, so no
explanations from me were necessary. He knew it all, and doubtless much
more than had escaped me. Like the princely gentleman he always was,
the poor boy tried to soften that after-noon's blows by saying social
customs were stupid and artificial and I knew all the important things
in life. The other few little things and habits of his world he could
easily tell me.
Few--and little! There were thousands, and they loomed bigger each day.
Moreover, Tom did not tell me. Either, manlike, he forgot, or he was
afraid of hurting my feelings.
One of the few things Tom did tell me I was forever forgetting. Napkins
belonged to Sundays at home, and they were not washed often. It was a
long-standing habit, to save back-breaking work for mother, to fold my
napkin neatly after meals. Unlearning that and acquiring the custom of
mussing up one's napkin and leaving it carelessly on the table was the
meanest work of my life.
Interesting guests came to Tom's house, and I would grow absorbed in
their talk. Not until we were leaving the table would I realize that my
napkin lay neatly folded and squared in the midst of casually rumpled
heaps.
One night, years later, I sat between Jim Hill and Senator Bailey of
Texas at a dinner. Both men folded their napkins. I loved them for it.
During that first year Tom made up a little theater party for a
classmate who had just married a Philadelphia girl. With memories of
Ben Franklin, William Penn, Liberty Bell, and all the grand old
characters of the City of brotherly Love, I looked forward eagerly to
making a new friend.
The Philadelphian was even more languid than Tom's mother. She chopped
her words and there were no r's in her English. I tried to break the
ice by talking of the traditions of her city. She was bored. She knew
only Philadelphia's social register. Just to play tit for tat, twice
during the evening I quoted from "Julius Caesar"--and scored!
We had just settled down in old Martin's Restaurant for after-theater
supper when two tall gentlemen entered the room.
"There's Tom Platt and Chauncey Depew," remarked Tom's friend casually.
United States senators are important people in Wisconsin--at least, they
were when I was young. If a senator visited our community, everybody
turned out. I knew much of both these men, and Tom had often spoken
warmly of Depew. As they approached our table, Tom and his friend both
stood up. Thrilled, I rose hastily. My eyes were too busy to see Tom's
face, and I did not realize until afterward that the only other woman
had remained coolly seated.
On our way home, Tom told me, in his gentle way, never to rise from a
dining table to acknowledge an introduction even to a woman--or a
senator. That night a tormenting devil with the face of the other woman
kept me awake. For the first time since my marriage I felt homesick for
the prairies.
And then we were invited to visit Tom's Aunt Elizabeth in Boston and
meet the whole family. I was sick with dread. I begged Tom to tell me
some of the things I should and should not do.
"Be your own sweet self and they 'll love you," he promised, kissing me.
He meant it, dear soul; but I knew better.
From the very first minute, Tom's Aunt Elizabeth made me conscious of
her disapproval. In after years I won the old lady's affection and real
respect, but I never spent a completely happy hour in her presence.
The night we arrived she gave me a formal dinner. Some dozen additional
guests dropped in later, and I was bewildered by new faces and strange
names. Later in the evening I noticed a distinguished-looking
middle-aged gentleman standing alone just outside the drawing-room door.
Hurrying out, I invited him to come in. He inquired courteously if
there was anything he could do for me.
"Yes, indeed," I assured him. "Come in and talk to me." He looked shy
and surprised. I insisted. Then Tom's aunt called me and, drawing me
hastily into a corner, demanded why I was inviting a servant into her
drawing-room.
"Servant! He looks like a senator," I protested. "He's dressed exactly
like every other man at the party and he looks twice as important as
most of them."
"Didn't you notice he addressed you as 'Madam'?" pursued Aunt Elizabeth.
"But it 's perfectly proper to call a married woman 'Madam.'
Foreigners always do," I defended.
"Can't you tell a servant when you see one?" inquired the old lady
icily.
I begged to know how one could. All Boston was summed up in her answer:
"You are supposed to know the other people."
Tom's wife could have drowned in a thimble.
The third day of our visit, we were at the dinner table, when I saw Aunt
Elizabeth's face change--for the worse. Her head went up higher and her
upper lip drew longer. Finally she turned to me.
"Why do you cut your meat like a dog's dinner?" she snapped.
Tom's protesting exclamation did not stop her.
I laid my knife and fork on my plate and folded my hands in my lap to
hide their trembling.
Time may dim many hurts, but with the last flicker of intelligence I
shall remember that scene. Even then, in a flash, I saw the symbolism
of it.
On one side--rare mahogany, shining silver, deft servants, napkins to
rumple, leisure for the niceties of life. On the other hand--a log
cabin, my tired mother with new babies always coming, father slaving to
homestead a claim and push civilization a little farther over our
American continent.
A great tenderness for my parents filled my heart and overflowed in my
eyes. I have, I confess, had moments of bitterness toward them. But
that was not one of them.
"I think I can tell you," I answered, as quietly as I could. "It 's
very simple. I was the first baby, and mother cut up my food for me.
After a while she cut up food for two babies. By the time the third
came, I had to do my own cutting. Naturally, I did it just as mother
had. Then I began to help cut up food for the other babies. It 's a
baby habit. And I must now learn to cut one bite at a time like a
civilized grown person."
Even Aunt Elizabeth was silenced. But Tom rose from the table,
swearing. My father would not have permitted a cowpuncher to use such
language before my mother. But I loved Tom for it.
However, I did not sleep that night. Next morning Tom's Aunt Elizabeth
apologized, and for Back Bay was really unbending.
Some days later we returned to New York, and I thought my troubles were
over for a time. But the first night Tom came home full of excitement.
He had been appointed to the diplomatic corps, and we were to sail for
England within a month!