[Note: Bertha is 33 and has asked Marie about how to get her start as a commercial artist (the equivalent of a graphic designer today). It doesn’t appear that Bertha ever went down that path. She received a fellowship from the Tiffany Foundation that year, which likely encouraged her to pursue her art.]
I am posting this on my way to lunch. Have been doing a couple of color jobs – a very fluffy “fairy queen” effect in a paper face looking negligee for a folder advertising bedroom slippers. 4 pairs are sketched in color – blue, yellow and black, raspberry and gold, and pink and blue. It really has been fun and I somewhat forgot my headache. I have in prospect this afternoon a cover for a history I’m doing – white seagulls on intense blue sky, a salmon sun, blue and white and salmon ocean, with silhouette of an ancient “Balboa and Drakey” looking vessel (which I love) “Pacific History” in salmon with Topside and Harr Wagner Publishing Company beneath.
The cover Marie Schubert designed
I have an extra special Christmas card order – a Life Insurance company whose building makes a picture at Twilight against Twin Peaks. I’m going to go up Market St. some (late) afternoon and do it and then make a small poster effect reproduction for the card and use that with “Greetings” and so forth to make it appropriate and I have a cover for a golfing and sporting magazine that I was told about three weeks ago to have a try at and haven’t touched it yet and there are a stack of toys here waiting. I love drawing cunning dolls and pups and cats and elephants but the circular trains and toy typewriters aren’t so much fun.
Wouldn’t it be fun if Dorothy would join us two in Paris next fall? I would come through the Orient up by Spain sketching.
Once more, au revoir.
Marie
Part II
In your letter, you spoke of commercial art. The way to begin is to look at advertisements in the papers, for instance a “quite swell” hat sketch. Then take one of your own and put it on and do a Higgins waterproof ink sketch on Strathmore 2 or 4 play rather slick surface (in pen and ink not wash.) Pen and ink makes line cuts or Zimco’s, some people call them costing about half what wash drawings amount to for they have to be halftones. Always remember that space in a newspaper costs dollars per inch and don’t do a hat with lots of body sticking down or a coat with arms sticking out in the air eating up valuable space.
To get together samples, take your own stuff and do a preliminary sketch, a dress, a coat, a suit, a fur piece, stockings, gloves, handbags, blouse, etcetera. First studying those in the newspapers and working about half again as large. If you are given a job ask, “How wide by how deep?” If he says 4×10, he means four columns wide by 10 inches or 10 lines. Be sure to find out whether they measure depth by lines or inches. If the former, get a line ruler such as engravers use, a column is about 9 inches wide. Measure a newspaper if in doubt. Before you start your sketches, go to the library and look at the International Correspondence School books on Illustration and Commercial Art and Advertising. Even if you get old books with antique and wildly funny pictures, the technique of the thing is underneath and I do truly think you will find it fascinating once you get started.
When your samples are ready to go to the advertising manager of department stores and advertising agencies, tell them you have had years of art training and are sure you can give them something a little out of the ordinary and that to get started, you will be very reasonable in your prices. Figures average from $2.50 to $10.00 apiece. Shoes are hard for beginners but bring $2.50 to $10.00 also. A child’s figure takes less time than women’s so the prices are from a dollar up in quantities. Never do a sketch less than $2.50 if you make a special trip for it (going to see about it and going to deliver it eats up time you know.) A blouse or hat or glove or stocking think will be about $2.00 up to most anything depending on how many you get in a bunch you know. I have turned out 20 sketches from 10AM to 2PM but the ideal rate is about seven figures in a day.
Example of newspaper fashion illustration from 1924
Do your sketches very lightly in a rather hard pencil every time just as you want it then ink it. Don’t use a soft pencil. This makes a messy drawing. Clean well with art ____ afterward and if you smear, use Ruhl’s intense white or Devoes show card white. Put on with pen. Study pattern sheets to see how stitching pleats and folds are handled. It is hard for beginners to make folds without making it look like wrinkles and if there aren’t any folds, it looks tight as a sausage so one has to make folds.
Get a book on lettering (Blairs, if you can) but one with lots of alphabets and lots of sizes. If you get a letter job, get some onionskin paper and space the letters correctly by tracing it till it looks right.
Don’t ever admit that you can’t do anything on Earth, you can if you try. Scout round and see how other people handled it and then pitch into it.
I take anything. I’ve drawn kitchen stores and brass monkeys and I don’t hesitate an instant. Never flicker an eyelash no matter what they spring. I say somethings, “I have a number of ideas. Let me feel around with roughouts till I see which will fill the space best.” And, in taking a job, never fail to ask, “When do you have to have this?” Newspapers are like trains – you just can’t be late you know. You will win their hearts by always getting you stuff to them a little earlier than they say though they generally make it from 2 to 24 hours ahead of schedule at that for safety’s sake. So, if you get too hurried say to them, “You know, I can do much better work if I don’t have to rush it so can’t you let me have just a little bit longer?”
How I do wish I could be with you and start you off right. Once you get going, you can go anywhere in the world and earn a good living at commercial art. I have proved that and now is a wonderful time to start with the Christmas rush coming on.
III
This is part three and I have been delayed by hearing the death of dear grandma Lubbs of whom I know you’ve heard me speak. She was my good angel during months and months of anxiety and struggle and bitter headaches. Dorothy’s letter dropped the funeral notice into my hand and though I can’t yet realize that I’ll never see grandma gain. It has been a terrible shock. I feel as if I had been pounded and I couldn’t help getting more behind with my work than ever. So, now, I am working very hard to catch up again.
Dolores is married. Mrs. H Bryant now. She was painfully shy and never admitted to people that she was engaged till her wedding was announced. A girl chum of hers (whose husband disappeared some months ago, leaving her alone with two or three little children and believing him murdered) is taking a house or apartment and I may go to her instead of remaining where I am. I’m to see her Tuesday.
I have to go home now. It is late and _____ _____ has gone out of town a few days, leaving Sonny Boy with a young daughter _____ is a darling but I worry so because if any emergency arose, she is only a child herself after all.
I’ll write again soon. I do so love to hear from you and we may meet in Paris next fall. I have about a thousand in bank and bills out right now for another thousand and work averaging a hundred a week probably till after Christmas (maybe till after Easter) so I’m thinking of a trip around the world next fall. More next time.
To Bertha from Marie Schubert – (Date is approximate)
(First part missing)
Sunday –
My letters have to be of the installment variety it seems so here comes the second chapter.
You know when I first began with Hecht’s [Note: A large chain of department stores at the time] I was on the official role but the girls were jealous of my many privileges so after much trouble, I was put to punching a time clock. When I came in in the morning, when I went out to lunch, when I returned from lunch, when I went home. I couldn’t leave the building without a pass signed by my ”boss” and countersigned by the superintendent and so forth and so forth. Mr. Cassett got in the habit of sending me home early with a pass signed “business” and his assistant would punch my card for me at six o’clock. I had misgivings all the time that would start something unpleasant eventually but when my boss said, “go home” and I said, “WE are going to be spoken to some day severely I think if I do.” And he said, “Let them try it. Go on home to your kiddie.” What could I do? I went. Then the girls in the time keeper’s booth docked me for a quarter of a day when I went out on a pass signed by Mr. Cassett and marked by him, “business.” When I said, “Mr. Cassett, they have docked me,” he went berserker. I held my breath. He flew into the office of the “Highest One” where a conference was going on. It is next door to the advertising department. He slammed the door as he went in and I heard him simply “hollering” at them. He made a regular speech – said that because I was clever enough to finish my drawings quick by they were stupid enough to dock me – said I was conscientious and breaking my back right at that moment to save them from having to pay almost fifty dollars for inferior outside art work for their “sale” and, in return, they were rewarding me with such low down penny pinching cheap brainless foolishness as penalizing me for being a quick worker. He howled at them that to take a person of such highly specialized training and put her on a time clock basis was FUNNY. And he finished, “Does she punch the time clock? – I leave it to you – or doesn’t she?”
They answered in a chorus, “She does not.”
“Does she go home when she finishes her work?”
“She goes.”
So, now, I sail past the time clerks sometimes at three o’clock, take as long as I please for lunch and am altogether an eyesore to the girls who started the whole trouble.
There is a girl in the advertising department who tries to make a “buddy” of me. She is one of these born mischief makers. The time clerk girls use her for a “telephone” to send insulting messages. They know that she will dash up to me with any unpleasant remark they make so it relieved their feelings immensely to tell Miss Mullin that the “whole advertising department act like darned fools” and that “the artist is a stuck up pill” – that they’re “glad they aren’t geniuses if geniuses are such nuts.” It really is very comical for they are so polite to me. The other day, Miss Mullen flew in – all excited – and wanted to know if I had been “spoken to” about violating the dress regulation. As a matter of fact, some time ago when the question arose, I decided to “conform” although Mr. Casset said I need not. I am not out in the shop (you haven’t been told that I now have my own private studio with special electric lights, desk table, cushioned arm chair, file cabinet, materials galore and everything I ask for) and there really isn’t any reason for my dressing in navy blue except that the girls are jealous of my every privilege. However, I decided that I would wear navy blue and bought two navy blue dresses – one with a deep cape collar of navy and roman stripes – the other has a vest of vermillion velour.
Dress from 1924
You know I detest myself in navy blue anyways and thought I was being very virtuous to put my money in the unbecoming dresses just because I didn’t want to excite envy.
Well – in flew Miss Mullion – demanding if I had been spoken to about violating the dress regulations. I was amazed I said, “But I haven’t. I’ve worn only navy blue.” “But you have some color on it,” she said, “and they called me down for wearing an écru waist [Note: beige] instead of white and said they were going to speak to you.” (That was what she came to find out.) “Did they?” I said, “No.” “What are you going to say to them if they do?” (Just itching to carry back an insult to them from me.) I shrugged my shoulders. “What are you going to say?” I shrugged again and laughed. She said, “Well, they’re just jealous cats.”
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she went down and told them that I said so. However, it doesn’t annoy me in the least. When my boss heard that I might receive a calling down, he said, “Send ‘em in to me.”
My studio is just as comfortable as it can be made. (I even have a little electric device to heat water and I have hot tea with my lunch when I bring my own lunch as I prefer to do.) It has a north light. I see only the heads of the departments. The chief buyer, the superintendent, the manager and the more intelligent sort.
Everybody is just as pleasant to me as desired and I do love my work. I really do. It’s like playing paper dolls and being presented with fat checks every few days. The brains of the shop really defer to me, which does make such a difference in the atmosphere. It might have been so irksome.
I have been rereading your delightful letter. It did warm my heart so to find it waiting for me after my long hours downtown. It was just sweet of you to sympathize with my struggles and I certainly can sympathize with that horrid strange city feeling. I have been filled with real panic once or twice in times gone by just from that utter loneliness of being in a crowd of strangers.
It made me feel something of a “bluff” to have you praise my courage. Good gracious. I’m not brave and I’m certainly not a bit pious or resigned – I’m just seething with rebellion and all sorts of feelings that I suspect aren’t a bit Christian. I firmly believe that the meek shall inherit the Earth only when everybody else gets through with it. I’m furious with fate for every blow and I just wouldn’t admit that I was beaten if I were pounded to a jelly. I don’t know whether it’s pride or perversity or what but it isn’t courage. I’m sure because there have been more times than I like to think about when I couldn’t see any hope in the future and my heart has been sick.
One evening, I was just stamping along in a perfect fury. It was cold and bleak and I suddenly saw a big red light on the corner. In the chilly gloom, it shone out intensely hot and vivid and it seemed to me that I was so filled with passionate feeling that I ought to shine out just as flaming red and incandescent. It was during Sonny’s brief illness and I’m sure anybody who came anywhere near me should have received violent electric shocks and heard hissing noises and seen shooting sparks. So when anyone praises me, I feel that there is a misunderstanding somewhere for I cannot feel that I am a commendable character – on the contrary – I am very rebellious, weak, and human, and a meek and submissive spirit is not in me.
Dorothy, Catharine, and Elise Somebody have been reuniting Miss Critcher’s studio Sunday mornings. They had a Romanian Jewess who had posed for Henri. She had the bluest black hair, a natural complexion and a mouth the color of pomegranate flesh – that pale delicate pink – vivid but exquisite. They put her against a faded satin (between salmon and vermilion) background. It was stunning.
This week, they have a red haired girl in a yellow smock against silver gray.
I went down to see and came away nearer to the Demon driven state of mind than I would have believed considering the many things for which I have to be thankful. They had asked me to paint too – but Sunday is Ethele’s day off and there are a million little fiddling duties and a button here, a darn there, laundry lists, checks to be written and mailed, my hair to wash, dinner to prepare and twenty two pounds of wiggle tail to tended, lifted and rocked and washed and changed and fed and frolicked with – and so forth – there, too, my paints are in storage so I can’t paint. I can’t. The time is not yet.
So I do not see much of Dorothy and it does feel very lonely sometimes.
Congenial friends are a treasure indeed.
Which reminds me of what you say about men. You perhaps know that Hafiz several thousand years ago sang this – “In all this city, not one girl for me. Oh, girls and girls. But not the one I mean.”
I have often marveled at the number of utterly impossible men in this vale of tears. One feels like exclaiming with Napoleon, “My God how rare men are!”
I find some consolation in the thought that occasionally one finds a congenial spirit once or twice in a lifetime. I have found a girl or a man I felt I could talk to and trust to have the ideas of honor and beauty and life-in-general that I have. Though like you, I have had some very lonely moments in the midst of crowds of people. Hafiz speaks of “the immortal lonely ones.” So, perhaps there is hope for us.
Sunday after Thanksgiving Day
My dear – This is the third chapter – I had planned to use Thanksgiving Day to catch up on all my leftover affairs. Sew the button on Sonny’s shoe, darn the lace on his pillow cover, extend the vest in my new frock so that the silk lining would not shine out when I stooped over, write my sister and tell her what I thought of letting me go two whole weeks in suspense (and I still do not know if it’s a boy or a girl or – what its name???) and so forth and so on. But, as usual, my plans were knocked into a cocked hat.
The night before Thanksgiving, I received a telegram in the middle of the night – scared me horribly. Of course I thought something had gone wrong with my sister or her baby – not hearing a word has worried me. It was my brother Walter Mitchell saying his ship docked at New York instead of Charleston and he would spend Thanksgiving with me. I leaped into my cloths and dashed down to meet him (it was one o’clock) and the disturbance of uncle’s arrival roused Norman _____. So, on the whole, it was a wild night.
Thanksgiving Day, we went to see Lenore _____ in a David Belaco-adaptation of a French comedy in which a divorced-red-haired wife and a gutter snipe chorus girl struggle for the love of a rather nice man – sort of Bernard Shaw effect. I do not like to see women rowing over a man or pursuing him madly or wooing him and luring him and all that and I had my doubts of the kind of matrimonial life the poor chat would lead “ever afterward” with “that little devil” Kiki even if she did really love him wildly. However, she was entertaining even if she did walk out of her clothes and parade around very unconsciously in nothing much made of pink wash satin and she was pretty in a bizarre sort of way and everybody in the audience was wildly in love with her – she received I-didn’t-count-how-many curtain calls and at last, Mr. Belase himself came out and said how proud he was of his little girl.
It was wonderful to see Walter Mitchell again (after two years of traveling.) He is just back from abroad and the things he relates as everyday occurrences are very picturesque to me. All sorts of character studies in his casual descriptions of people. The French Admiral for instance who sucked snails out of their shells and was furious because, by mistake, the waiter presented him with the bill for Walter’s party. The Captain of the ship with whom Walter made a hit by permitting him to instruct Walter on various obvious naval issues. The mate (who holds a Captain’s or Master’s certificate and is only a mate because of the vast unemployment in Marine shipping just now) was always at daggers points with the Captain because the old man insisted on telling him how everything should be done.
The Hawaiians who mutinied and then accused the mate of sleeping on watch when brought before the court when the vessel docked in New York and the fight afterward as they came back to the ship for their belongings.
And so on and so forth – all in a day’s work for Walker but very entertaining to his big sister. The ship sailed for Africa and the Mediterranean cost. Walter was feeling quite virtuous for having renounced such a trip in order to go back to school (he is now a sophomore at Fla. University) and I think I would feel rather heroic myself if I had given up a trip like that to go back to school.
Speaking of traveling – Do you still think of Paris next summer with Dorothy? She talks of it constantly as something to look forward to, to build for, to hope and plan and save for, something worthwhile to do with this money she has earned so tediously. “Elise is going in June with an aunt and might make the trip with them if you are already there” – she says.
Dear me, here it is half past one and my mother-in-law expecting me over there this afternoon. Karl has taken Sonny Boy over this morning. Perhaps Dorothy has told you that one Sunday some time ago my mother-in-law got so irritated with that she told me to go home. I left her house of course – utterly dumbfounded. I didn’t know what I had said to make her so provoked and it seems like the last straw – with all I have to stand, and struggle with to have my husband’s mother unpleasant was just unbearable. I just couldn’t go to those two rooms which I now call home. I knew I would cry my eyes out if I went there feeling as I did and I had a busy days drawing before me Monday and had to save my eyes for that. So, I went to Dorothy’s.
And together we went to see Miss Perrie’s exhibit. Poor soul. She died deeply in debt and the proceeds of the exhibit were to be used to pay her bills.
And I dumped my woes on Dorothy who was very sweet and patient. I still do not know what I said I was sick to begin with and had run a great splinter through the sole of my shoe the day before into my foot which was very sore in consequence and my head was splitting with a headache from my eyes and I was wondering if I had to wear glasses when on Earth I could have my eyes examined without interfering too much with my work. I suppose Mrs. Rathvon thought I was complaining about having to work and casting reflections at Karl. That must be what was the matter. I cannot conceive any other reason why my saying that I ached all over would anger her. I did ache and just said no because it rather obtruded itself upon my mind and I didn’t mean to appear in a martyr’s role in the least. I hadn’t thought of such a thing. She said crossly that it was very amusing to hear a person who was never ill constantly telling how frail she was. I was surprised and I guess my jaw dropped with amazement as she went on to say that if I really felt so bad I’d better go home and that I never had been sick a day in my life and so forth and so on and as I stood there silent, I didn’t know what to say to that you know. She said, “Go on home.” And I turned without a word and went and she said “you’re not going home angry, I hope.” Not in an apologetic way but crossly – so I said, “no.” But I can’t tell you how it made me feel.
Two weeks later, she called up as if nothing had happened and chatted over the phone and – I chatted back – as if nothing had happened. It is very uncomfortable to go there now. I’m afraid some other quite innocent remark will stir her resentment and it is horrid not to be at least on terms of neutrality with one’s mother-in-law, it seemed to me she always tried to be nice to me and this was a shock – in fact, a blow.
I can’t feel that I quite deserved it though I suppose I should have spoken more guardedly. Though Heaven knows if I had felt like complaining of Karl I certainly would not have carried my grievances to his mother. Of course, I may err in my solution of her irritation. But, isn’t it tough to have that happen. I’ll never feel free to say what I think before her. I detest having to review each sentence before uttering it for fear of annoying or hurting over sensitive feelings. It is so lovely to say what one thinks and he assured that the listener knows you well enough to know you wouldn’t say slurry, spiteful, complaining, or sarcastic things, that your heart is in the right place, and you think no evil or malice.
I have been reading in the Literary Digest about Sargent’s paintings in Boston (how lucky you are) and about De Lazlo in the Rotogravure section of the Sunday papers – showing more of his not just “successful” but “triumphant” portraits. The man is a wonder and I don’t care how many Jarbells say he is “flashy” and “tricky” and things like that. I am like Dorothy, inclined to be “De Lazlo dizzio” (as her brother termed it.)
I am looking forward so to the contemporary artists’ exhibit at the Corcoran soon. I hope that the next or at the latest the one after next will have canvases of yours, mine, and Dorothy’s gracing it – it’s time some of us began “arriving.” Began evoluting into a professional. Do think up a picture and I’ll try to and I’ll urge Dorothy and let’s at least submit something and get started submitting and keep on submitting till we weary them or startle them into recognizing us as “contemporary” artists. Please let’s the three of us band together and bolster each other’s courage and see if we can’t surprise ourselves pleasantly by discovering that we are in the stage of “knowing, but knowing not that we know.”
Wouldn’t it be fun!
Bertha – there is so much that I’d like to chatter about but I have to snatch moments for any of my pleasures so that I feel that my letters are very disjointed and even incoherent. Perhaps the time will soon come when I will not be so hurried all the time then I’ll write you a “real” one instead of such patchworks.
About this York person. He seems to be making the grade and is on the verge of something bigger. A former letter, unanswered, offered me the vice-presidency of his Trading Corporation now being formed and position as Chief Operator (trade) incorporate – 100 shares of 6% preferred stock (voting power) and sell the common to the public. Use the money derived there from for ___ trading capital. Vote ourselves bonuses and extra dividends when we make successful trades. Give common stock holders dividends when they are any left. The old racket played by Investment Trusts? With a little more build ups, dignity and the prestige of some bank as trustee but the same thing exactly. I know. In business, to make money for the insiders like they all are. And the public apparently likes it for they buy and will continue buying. This idea of his is my idea. I told him that I was washed up with “services” but was interested only in trading and you see that he has gotten the idea. While I talk about it, he does it.
I am writing to you about it. Here is where we will be if considered. A chance to trade with money to do it with and a part of the profits. Manage Tom’s account for 50% and a salary besides from York. Whether we like York or not or approve of him is neither here nor there. He is unique. In a depression, he has made the grade while I am in the sticks. And Honey, we need $100,000 badly and here is a chance to get it. I am ambitious for us. You can be the social leader of the Spokane with that sum. You have talent and brains and beauty. I have learned what NOT to do in the market but here is a chance of what to do. I have brains and nerve, if I have $10,000 to trade with can make us independent in a year or two.
Are we willing to fight for this chance? I am older and more conservative now. I do not want you to have hardships anymore, but if you have the old audacious spirit yet, the sink or swim idea I always have, I am ready to go. York is not four flushing [Note: Bluffing.] There is no reason to do so. He would not call me across the continent on a four flush. He knows me too well. He has nerve and will make his million in a few years some way. I dislike the service idea as I dislike all services but a trading corporation is my meat and he sees it now. He has a former investment trust man with him but says he is no trader and I am. Personalities aside, here is a chance at Wall Street, a job and a larger account to trade (Tom’s account my private affair) but a useful extra source of income.
Now, honey, don’t be alarmed. I lay my cards on the table face up. I will not go without you. Never. I love you deeply and want to do well by you. But can I make you happy in a small way. As I said, I am invigorated and happy by your visit. Shall we take this chance or not? It’s alright with me whatever you say. I will not go alone. Life is too short. How to go? A small car for $75.00 – $100.00 expense money – an advance from York if stuck on the road.
I’m not out of my head, honey, my feet are on the ground but, honey, we need the money. With a background of $5,000 a year, $100,000 at 5% we can be the most popular couple in Spokane. I like the social thing, the country club things, winter in London and all more than you suspect. (But I like it only with you. Not for myself.) But perhaps you think this a wild idea, maybe it is. At any rate, I love you a whole lot. You are my life and hope and I write this merely to see how you feel. No dogmatic statements. It looks like a chance to make some money. But it means a year’s concentrated hard work for me and child rearing in a small apartment for you. [Note: According to birth records, Bertha lost a child at or shortly after birth]. Let me know your reaction but don’t say go alone for I won’t. Neither do I say it’s best. I don’t know. It’s this way, York is making money. I’m not and I need to. He gives me a chance. Is it worth it?
Lots of love and a long kiss. You are mine and I’ll always cherish you, my love.
I wrote you a very glum and silly letter yesterday because I felt awfully depressed and miserable physically and otherwise, a miserably cold, rainy day, and today is another but I seem to be getting the better of the depression and have hit on a very simple remedy for cold feet – an Italian metal hot water bottle wrapped in a newspaper under my desk. If that doesn’t work a cure, I’ll have to resort to the steamer rug, but am keeping that in reserved on the bed. The weather and things are “not as good” but after all, I have quite a lot of fun and it’s more amusing to write about the good times.
One Sunday not long ago, I put my cares aside after lunch and went to Feisole. It was a glorious day and I should not have been temped to venture on the buses on a Sunday, but it just seemed too good to miss, so I pinned a modest bunch of violets upon myself and set off. Naturally the tram was crowded and how you have to change in the outskirts of Florence and take a bus from there on, with the usual result that _____ when a container that is not big enough is emptied into one that is considerably smaller. I was hanging on a stop next to some American woman and I couldn’t resist remarking that the Italians were finding out what we have all over the world “that a change from a tram to a bus was a change for the worse and not for the better.” Discussion followed. Questions, etcetera, and eventually that they were from California, and from that eventually that I was from Spokane and an artist, and then they were surprised and wondered if by change I was the artist of whom they had heard of from Mrs. Ben Kizer and I was. [Note: Ben Kizer was a prominent Spokane attorney.] So that was a little amusing.
I got up to Fiesole, peeped in the cathedral and saw no signs of life so went up to San Franceses where I hadn’t been since I came back. Speedily decided that I was a poor artist when painted there before, and went into the courtyard.
Fiesole Cathedral
Fra Clementino is still buzzing around, when a “cute” friar gets to be forty or so he loses a lot of his cuteness and just becomes insignificant. I’ve known Fra Clamentino [Note: “Fra” is used as a title for an Italian monk or friar.] a long time, a little, and despised him for quite a long time, too. I loathe professional religious poseurs, if I don’t have reason to think there is anything sincere back of it all. Well, I have my reasons for detesting that little friar but he seems to be putting aside the frivolities of his youth and is prim as the cat that has eaten the canary. So I was amused. On the way down hill I took note that a gift shop has replaced a peasants’ house where I once went to see a sick woman, miserably dark and damp and cold it was then. And then I met a procession coming up the hill. Lots of choir boys and after than the bishop (new one) with Don Luigi in attendance. I hadn’t seen Don Luigi in a long time so we exchanged glances and I trailed along back up the hill to see what was doing.
There was a funcione for the bestowal of medals in the deserving of the Society of the Misericordia, a hard-faced looking lot, but useful no doubt. Much ceremony, the bishop in his chair, Monsignor Bandini with two other priests celebrating the benediction, anther priest preaching an extraordinary long sermon, which I was able to understand perfectly. Don Luigi making a little speak to the Misericordia and then reading the names and handing the medals to the bishop, who seated on his throne, opposite where I was standing, presented the medals and recipients who knelt on the steps before him. I had a fine place to see being beside a filler just opposite of me and two steps down.
The vestments were very nice, white and gold, and the bishop in his purple (which is crimson) and Don Luigi and the other canons in their purples lined white fur winter capes, with eighteen inches of real lace on his cotta. D.L. is still quite imposing, a little leaner, but very tall and dignified looking. After most of the ceremony was over, he walked majestically across the platform and passed down through the crowd beside me without a glance.
Presently returned and as he passed, put into my hands a paper bag! I was dumbfounded but managed to gather that I was to take it. So I did. “Chec’é?” asked the woman next to me. “Non so,” said I. All around me, people were craning their necks. I took a peek, and then I was just busting to laugh. Inside was a loaf of peasant bread. Well, I inferred that I was invited to tea and that having acquired this awkward possession Don Luigi had availed himself of me as a carrier.
So after the funcione, I bore it down the hill (it proved to be “blessed bread,” and had tea. A silly little incident but every now and then there comes some _____ little experience that ____ the monotony and makes me feel that I do really see a little more and know a little more of the people than the casual foreign dwellers here.
Am rejoicing over my first successful efforts at putting the difficult and characteristic little “me”s and “si”s into my Italian conversation. My verbs are shaky still, but I can manage an occasional subjective and conditional. The other day, I was in a tea shop having a cup of coffee. The same shop where early in the summer I saw a beautiful white kitten playing with a little dog. Now the kitty is larger but is allowed and came into the shop very little because it is deaf and will run out and its mistress says is would displease her to see it under an automobile. Nobody being in the shop I was talking with the Signora. She asked me if I was an American, because Americans “speak with the throat more often than the English,” and from one thing to another I began to talk about cats and the merits, etcetera, of long-haired ones. Hers is a cross. I spoke of its “capelli,” and then she laughed and said that that was the first mistake I had made, that one must say “pilli” a “pellichia” of animals. So I gathered that I had been speaking pretty well. I also had tea and lunch several times lately entirely in Italian, not a word of English spoken, whether they could or not. And of course, I’ve fought all my battles with my dressmaker in Italian, and really speak it most of the time now, even with people who speak English.
I haven’t seen Picci in so long but he was dropping into the habit of speaking Italian to me, too. Signor Nisocchi (Dr. Nisocchi, I must practice that) alone continues to speak English most of the time, although he can speak Italian very well.
I hope your church affairs will adjust themselves. A married clergy is always subject to certain disadvantages. All wives do not have a “call.”
You spoke of being sorry for Dr. Bram and since then, I have had the news of Ethel’s death. I am extremely sorry, but like yourself, I felt that she was worried and that the condition of her health (although I had no idea of this) had her such as to _____ the happiness of their marriage to some extent. Since it seems to have been cancer and she suffered so much, it is better for both that it is ended. I feel very sorry for all concerned, very, but these last months must have been terrible. Now Ethel is at rest and I hope the good Dr. Charles will be able to recover, for prolonged suffering in a member of ones family is really worse than the final separation, in some ways, when there isn’t anything that can be done to help much. He certainly has had hard luck in his marriages, less than eight years and he is a widower again. Too bad. I’m glad you were able to help a little at the office. I think a great deal more highly of him than I did eight or nine years ago, not that I didn’t like him, but I admire him more as I’ve come to know him, and passed a lot of hours in his chair, sad fact, those teeth! I had a card on my desk ready to address to Ethel when the news came. Now I’d better remember to send Isabel’s.
What a terrible change in our circle in these last years! Still Charles is perhaps more fortunate; I am sick every time I think of the Hughes. That gets me. He always saw such a lot of them. More than any other one family really. I like Ethel a lot, and always wanted to know her better, but her health is my health and the depression and all the rest of it kept that from becoming a real intimacy, but it wasn’t so with the Hughes.
But there, I’m getting _____ again. It’s the weather and the news, and the church won’t give me absolution for getting a divorce without all sorts of mess, and I won’t take it any further here, so I’m an unforgiven sinner, with permission to take the sacraments, but I have some conscientious scruples there myself, because I’m an unrepentant sinner. I think I was right to get a divorce, and I think I’ll stick to it. I think if Christ were here in these modern times, he wouldn’t think I was always in the right but I think he would think I was more sinned against than Frank and that it was a marriage that should be dissolved. Hell, it makes me a little unhappy because I think being at peace with the church is helpful in one’s life. But “Surnia!” as the Italians say “Su-corraggio!” [Note: “Cheer up!”] I am allowed to receive the sacraments at least for the present and with the broad philosophy which is my inside religion. I’ll take the good and forget the rest. One needs to. The strength and the weakness of the Catholic church is its elasticity. I wish it would elasticate a little more for me right now, but why worry? They can’t make me live with Frank, and I won’t, so that is that. Besides while the priest says it is my duty to live with my husband, the American laws and American society would be scandalized if I did without remarriage, and with all its faults my country really comes before my religion, and I might say that the best patriotism as taught at West Point, “Duty, Honor, Country,” was my first religion.
I have the photograph of you and Mamma and cats on my desk. I love their gracious tails. They are so expressive. Hope you read “Old Pybus” by Harwick Deeping? He is good. Have just read it in Italian. Also two or three of Sabatine’s tales. He is really one of the best of the later followers of Dumas. We get him here in translations from the English, and in that way he is becoming known in his native country. “Rafael Sabatini,” “Romanzo – Traduzione dall’ ingless di Francesco Marsicano.” Have read at least twenty novels in Italian in the last six months. It is splendid for enlarging one vocabulary and also for studying the construction of the ordinary give and take of conversation. In modern novels they say much what we say and one sees it written. It is also a good substitute for Berlitz. E.g. A man sits under a gong of “ottone,” what in the deuce, might be copper, bronze, brass, he keeps on sitting under it. After a while some one polishes a tray of “ottone,” probably metal, certainly metal, probabilities leaning towards brass. I walk along the sheet to see a lot of curtain rods in a window, marked “ottone”. So now I know ottone most thoroughly. Also when I wanted to speak of an automobile accident, I found flashing through my mind the improbably expression “investimento automobilistica.” And it was right (see “Old Pybus”) although I think it refers more exactly to a collision rather than a mere “disgrazia.” For me, it is as amusing as a crossword puzzle. Too amusing for I would gladly waste too much time reading. Perhaps it would be better if I would exert myself more in writing fluent and coherent letters. The need to write is so urgent with me. I find it all the time, but am too indolent in the hours when I do not work. Tonight I shall have to read French or English, or Henry James, he give me a pain in the neck, to become _____ American once more. Why a grown man should __ __ bothered to write such twaddle, and then people should have taken him seriously. I can’t. First I get annoyed, and then bored, and stop reading. You should read “Old Pyhus.” You might like it.
With love to all,
Bertha
P.S. After which I buckled down and began to write. Results to follow!
To Marie Shubert from Bertha Ballou – Approx. 1943
[Note: Bertha is about 53 years old. She is a professional artist in Spokane, WA and lives with her sister Sally, who is a librarian.]
2920 W. Sherwood
Spokane
Dear Marie,
Just received your card and + glad as always to hear from you and your interesting family. Please tell Dorothy, to whom I shall also write immediately – I hope – that I meant to have sent you both cards but have been swamped professionally – believe it or not – orders and orders ahead – and was working so hard in getting on fine in spite of having my brother’s boy – 16 – on our hands now [Note: This was Bill Ballou, the grandfather of the editor.] and then flu – no possibility of giving up and going to bed – just got up a little later – Sally doing the breakfast – then did the telephoning & husking up & dinner preparing and packages wrapping – lying down on the couch when I got too exhausted, then up and at it again.
Library down & its last possible substitute short of closing doors so when Sally came down with flu she took least possible time off and I jumped into breach here at home because she was sicker. She went back to work just before Xmas the day after Bill was down – of course he had to be put to bed and waited on & was cross as a bear – and away from his brothers for the first time so today for the second time only have I been able to work a little on a portrait whose background I am redoing while too indisposed to take on sitters – well it has been hectic and I’m not the gal that you are – too much work has the effect of stunning me – & none too bright at best.
Am inclined to dwell on the difficulties when I write – actually, if I didn’t have this household drudgery, life would be quite a lot of fun. I’m old and squat and fat, but two or three years ago the town’s eligible widower said (to someone else) that I was the handsomest single woman (naturally of a “certain age”) in Spokane.
I’m not – but Sally say I’ve held my own as well as anybody except my best friend who is beautiful – & rich so that she has gorgeous clothes – (I have some of them too – because she passes them on when she’s tired of them – or doesn’t like them – & I make them over – but it’s a secret. Also, while the man interest has passed out of my life except for endeavors to please my captive’s 16 year old – I do have a lot of fun doing portraits.
Much of my momentary prosperity is due to my good fortune in pleasing a sitter whom I did last summer. He has become an indefatigable promoter and has given me five more commissions himself – four small ones and one (a) larger – a replica of the first portrait – isn’t that a joke? but a lovely one for me. Of course everything here is on a modest scale – I make no more than a living. A very modest one in ordinary times – and with rising prices etc – I hope this year to be able to finish paying for the tiny orchard on the vacant lot next (to) my studio. Have watered the trees & gathered the apples for years. The trees are old or gnarled & Rachamesque – & I adore them – & now they are mine – or will be, I trust, by 1945 – and some other projects that we have had in mind may be realized – possibly.
Our days pass in work – our evenings in reading – much interrupted by the necessity of pushing, pulling and prodding the youth through the intricacies of math, English & Spanish. If we can manage it financially we plan on trying to induce his father to let him go to a Canadian boy’s school next year. A little British polish and mannerliness will not be out of place and the strain on Aunts will be considerably less.
Besides the aforementioned interest we have cats – many. They are very naughty & amusing & the way they can take balls off a Christmas tree is surprising – this morning I saw one love long haired “Cream-puff” standing on top of an electrolier [Note: A chandelier] (with an old fashioned solid top) on his hind legs reaching up for the higher balls that had escaped before. He got two. Our tree is always a small one which stands in a great brass jardiniere on a big table – & reaches from there up to our rather high ceiling.
Bill love the cats & when he is well anywhere up to seven may be found sleeping with him. Bill himself is 5’11” – not handsome, I think, though some girls do – but has charm. Not too many brains – but I think he’s a better boy than his father was at the same age which frankly is not excessive praise.
Now must get on with the job. Love & Happy New Year – BBB
