Excerpts from Diaries of Americans - Posted in Chronological Order

 

Diaries of Americans. 

I will b collecting a number of diaries of ordinary individuals into one document, portions of which may be of use to teachers. They are listed in order, by starting date of the entries. 

Rep. John Quincy Adams devotes the last part of his life
to fighting slavery as a member of Congress.

 

James Wilkes Taylor

(1842-1844) 

Here, we include selections from The Diary of James Wickes Taylor, who wrote about his struggles to succeed as a law clerk and lawyer in Cincinnati. His diary, covering 1842-1844, (as edited by James Taylor Dunn), was printed by The Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society in 1950. 

His first entry was made on August 2, 1842, when Taylor was 23. He spent seven years in the “Queen City of the West,” but Dunn looks at only three. Taylor went on to be editor of one newspaper, write for others, and compile a History of Ohio, First Period, 1650-1787 (published in Cincinnati in 1854). 

He married Chloe Sweeting Langford, mentioned but not named in his first diary entry, in 1845. They had five daughters. (Chloe was one of thirteen children herself.) Her husband was later appointed to be U.S. counsel in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and remained in that post for twenty-three years, until his death in 1893.

 

* 

August 2d 1842: A year since I witnessed an interview, which revealed to me a delightful assurance. Since morning, that event, and its consequences upon my present feelings and future happiness, have been to me, a constant and grateful time of musing, and let me celebrate the anniversary of that mutual discovery of two hearts – each learning the secrets of the other, by dedicating to its memory

 

The first page of my Diary (1)

 

Since James must head West to find (he hopes) success in his career, he leaves Chloe behind in New York, but promises to keep a diary. He traveled by canal across most of New York, took a lake steamer at Buffalo, and on arrival in Cincinnati, he set down some of his experiences. 

Cincinnati O. December 4^th: 1842. At Syracuse I… booked myself for Lewiston via Oswego Canal and Lake Ontario. The route was new to me, although I almost repented of my choice during the long watches of that night. O!! The miseries of the crowded cabin, the foul air, and narrow berths of a Packet Boat. … 

Very little of interest occurred on our voyage to Lewiston. One hour is a sample of twenty-four. I battled a cabin-ful of Whigs one whole forenoon. I had a tete a tete with a Hungarian, whose family was evidently noble, but who had emigrated to Wisconsin about two years since. He was just returning from Europe with his wife and children, accompanied by his father (a member of the Hungarian Diet who could speak French, German and Latin, but not English) and his mother. His parents intend returning in two years. Egad! They may have been noble, but some lessons in cleanliness would not have been amiss. (102/2)

 

At Buffalo, Taylor boarded the steamer Illinois: 

Frank Johnson and his band played us out of Buffalo harbor … It was a beautiful day when we tempted the waters of Lake Erie. The Illinois, a noble boat, was crowded to excess with passengers. Swiss emigrants, in great numbers choked the steerage – a brutalized class in very truth. Among the endless variety of characters which thronged the decks and cabins, I noticed the Hungarian family, two young Highlanders in their native plaides [sic] and two or three families from Yates County … emigrating to the West. … Saturday morning, and I was landed in Cleveland – welcomed to the soil of Ohio by a drizzling rain, through which I plodded to my hotel. (102/3)

 

Cleveland impressed him, but he quickly boarded a canal boat which would take him to Columbus. 

From Sunday evening to Wednesday noon we were “dragging our slow length along” the Ohio Canal. I should have died of ennui if our company had not been select and entertaining – the table furnished with tolerable variety and neatness, and the weather so delightful, that the deck was the favorite resort of all. (102/4)

 

He took a stage for Cincinnati on Friday morning, December 14, arriving at 3 a.m. the next day. During the ride, he met a judge who offered up his opinions on various topics and persons. Of William Henry Harrison, the judge remarked, “He was the most insufferably vain man I ever knew.” (102/5) 

Once arrived in Cincinnati, Taylor found lodgings in the home of a widow lady, at terms of “$4 a week exclusive of fire and light.” (102/6) 

He met and befriended a Mr. Ethan Stone and his family, Stone being one of the first settlers of the town (1802), and a relation by marriage, and also Alphonso Taft, destined to be the father of U.S. President William Howard Taft. 

December 23d 1842. I had my Daguerreotype likeness taken to day with tolerable success and will make another trial to morrow. I intend it for my mother.

 

January 1^st 1843. I had intended to enter in this my diary a deliberate series of resolutions for the coming year. But when brought to the test I shrink from the attempt. … Experience of the coming year might prove a sad commentary upon the presumptive vows formed and registered on its first night. … But I will venture to note three points – 1 Religion – to examine, mature my convictions and act on this important subject – 2 My profession – in the words of Lord Eldon, to live like a hermit and work like a dog – 3 Chloe - Yet what need of recording a prediction, that the first of ’44 shall find me true in heart to her, and as ardent in hope for her dear sake and the future, as at this moment? (102/11-12)

 

February 7. [He has this to say of Gen. Lewis Cass] He belongs to the second rank of our public men, yet his pretensions to the Presidency are daily becoming more prominent and feasible. He has been a popular and influential Minister to France – his descriptions of its King Court and Government have been read with universal pleasure and interest, and in the present confusion of the political Cauldron, it is deemed that his name may have the effect of soothing its raging elements. His chief merit is a negative one. Sheltered by his official situation and duties at Paris, he is identified with no party – no special policy, and is perfectly free from the embittered associations of the last five years. (102/13)

 

February 25. A frightful accident occurred this evening. A Pork House near the canal on Tenth St took fire, and was followed by an explosion of the gas, engendered from the vast quantities of lard, which flung the roof of the building into the crowded street, killing several, and wounding many others. (102/14)

 

He later reports that eight have died, others injured, and that a sense of gloom hangs over the town. 

 

“The wrath of God.” 

He makes the first of several entries dealing with William Miller, a devout expert on the Bible. Miller made a careful study of every line, and warned that the math showed that the Second Coming of Jesus and the end of the world were near. His warnings aroused thousands of Americans to take stock of their souls, and prepare for Doomsday. 

The Millerites published two newspapers in Cincinnati in these years, The Jubilee Trumpet and The Western Midnight Cry. 

March 1: The Miller delusion has its victims (the word is better than “converts”) here, as well as in the Eastern cities. (102/15)

 

April 20 (Thursday): For two weeks I have been “dawdling” (to use a word introduced to the language under the auspices of Fanny Kemble) at the Court House. On the whole, it is no waste of time. … There is a dramatic interest attending a trial before a jury, or an argument to the Court, which stimulates attention and reinforces the recollection. [One day he sees Chief Jockosot in native dress.] He carried his tomahawk in his hands. I hear that he is proceeding east, accompanied by two trained buffaloes, for the purpose of public exhibition, and will proceed to England.

 

April 23. This is the day, when our ears were to be greeted by the “crack of doom,” if Miller had donned the prophetic mantle. But its hours are speeding in safety to their bourn, and the curtain of time has not dropped over the world. (102/16-18)

 

May 13. Some one says truly, “God made the country and man made the town.” (102/19)

 

June 14. [From a high hill, west of the city, in “a very small village” called Cheviot, Taylor looks down at the Ohio River Valley.] From the hill that overhangs the valley of Cincinnati at this point, the prospect eastward is very imposing. We were looking down upon an immense amphitheatre perhaps destined to contain a million of people. (102/21)

 

Taylor spends part of a Sunday at a display of flowers. On the corner of Third Street and Vine, he passes the office where the newspapers of William Miller, spreading the word of the worlds’ end, are published. 

I glanced in, and there were seated several sinister-looking fellows, as lugubrious as the fate they are predicting. One was reading aloud, and I overheard a single phrase, “the wrath  of God.” I could not help contrasting the two scenes – the floral, and the fanatical.

 

Apropos, the Millerites have leased for several weeks the church across the way, and hold nightly their doom-denouncing meetings there. I have not attended them, but they cram our ears against the stomach of our success, from dusk till ten o’clock. (102/22)

 

The diarist also runs into Rees Evans Price, a dedicated preacher, who Taylor notes believes “he should never die.” 

He is expecting daily, the advent of a third Adam, a precursor of the Messiah, a prophet something like John the Baptist, who is to change the moral surface of the Globe, and whom he calls “the Ancient of days” described in the 72d Psalm. The great events, plagues, overthrows, signs & wonders, to ensue, and precede, the final coming of Christ, and running through a period of a thousand years, is the burden of Prices mission of prophecy, for which he claims the high authority of direct inspiration. He has the Bible on his tongues end and I listen to his rhapsodies with considerable interest.

 

In 1872, a writer would note that Price could talk, “not by the hour only, but the day and night.” (81)

 

Taylor also crosses paths again with Jockosot, 

…a Sac or Fox Indian, who has been in Cincinnati for several months in full costume, had become intoxicated in a low Jewish tavern across the street, and becoming clamorous, was turned out of doors. This aroused all his fury, and he grew so outrageous, that an attempt was made to take him before the Mayor. He resisted, and for half an hour, his struggles with four or five athletic men, were tremendous. He swayed back & forth – roaring out his war songs in the madness of his rage. He was at length overpowered, after the most Herculean resistance and was dragged down Vine St, muttering fearful imprecations, as his head drooped forward over his breast – Completely exhausted by his intense muscular exertion. Poor fellow! the doom of his race is upon him! (102/23)

 

June 15. Twenty years ago great numbers of silver eels were caught in the streams of Butler Co, although now they are seldom found. Mr. S. was very fond of them, and whenever he attended court at Hamilton, secured if possible his favorite dish. (102/24)

 

June 28. It is a very warm night. I dread the thought of retiring to my rest. My windows are open, and a strange medley of sounds greets my ears. Across the way, a fanatical Millerite is bellowing wrath and destruction to a crowded room. The pavements ring with the tread of numbers, returning from Shires garden [ a theater] – carriages rattle by, and about an hour since, I heard a crier, calling a “lost child,” but my lamp is waning. (102/25)

 

On July 2, Taylor went to hear speakers talk about the future of Oregon. Richard M. Johnson, the man famed for killing Tecumseh, was featured. He spoke in a “very energetic” fashion. “The crowd was too unwashed for a warm afternoon, and I soon escaped to purer air.” (102/27) 

(On July 3, the Cincinnati Gazette could warn visitors to the city, for the Fourth of July celebration: “The pickpockets will undoubtedly have a strong delegation here, and we advise every one to keep a sharp lookout for his money and papers, and pocket his watch, and watch his pocket too.”)

 

On July 4, he goes to hear speakers celebrate the day. “The military parade was very much as usual, with the addition of clouds of light dust, which attended the march of the Companies.” The colonel of the militia regiment “galloped back and forth,” making quite a show, “with hat off, and a very fierce look on.” 

One speaker read the Declaration of Independence, which was “well recieved [sic] and applauded at the close.” 

Before they commenced Rees E. Price, a poor religious lunatic, whom I have mentioned before in this diary, was haranguing the crowd upon the advent of the “Ancient of days,” despite of interruptions, hootings and jeers, and when Telford was about commencing, Price, who had clomb into a tree so as to be nearly on a level with the balcony [from which the speakers were addressing the crowd], broke forth into a loud demand “by what authority the people were gathered together” etc. With some difficulty he was quieted, and he made no interruption, until the close of the oration, when he could no longer be restrained, and began raving upon his usual topics, at the top of his lungs. How [well] this little incident represents the existence and extent of a morbid fanaticism in the community at this time. 

 

“Nine runaway slaves.” 

Taylor mentions Mrs. Elizabeth Sellman, “a widow lady, who although advanced in years, is sprightly, jocose, straight as a candle, and remarkably good-looking.” Her husband, he adds, “was the surgeon at Fort Washington, which once occupied the site of Cincinnati, and her residence here commenced in 1796.” (102/29) 

July 9. [He visits the Circuit Court.] Several important cases have grown out of the common practice of harboring and facilitating the escape of slaves from their masters in Kentucky. Although such precautions are usually observed, that no clue is left for the recovery of the fugitives, or the punishment of their confederates, still an occasional instance occurs, in which some incautious abolitionist is so connected with the affair, that a civil suit for damages is brought and sustained. Such a case is now on trial before Judge McLean. A Mr [John] Van Zandt on the morning of April 24 ’42 took into his market wagon, by concert with Cincinnati abolitionists, nine runaway slaves, and had proceeded some thirty miles toward Lebanon, when he was stopped, and the negroes restored to their master and the Plaintiff in this action, under the act of Congress of 1792 [1793]. These circumstances, beside his confessions at the time he was thus intercepted, leave little or no doubt, that Van Z., who seems a weak, simple-minded, fanatical man, will be amerced in heavy damages, although only one of the negroes finally escaped, and proved a total loss. Several of the witnesses have caused considerable merriment in Court. One fellow said, that on Sunday morning (April 24)  he saw Van Z. running his wagon on the Lebanon turnpike, and “I told him that it didn’t look well, for a man that belonged to the meetin, to be running horses on Sunday. He was always lecturing me on my bad deeds, and I thought I’d lecture him.” “What had he lectured you about?” asked the Counsel for the defence. “That’s none of your concern!” “But you must tell all” – persisted [Salmon P.] Chase. The opposite Counsel then interfered – the lawyers exchanged pros and cons, and the Judge was gravely proceeding to decide the point, when the witness broke in. “Wal! If you want to hear it, I’ll tell – I’m agreeable! but” he added with the coolest nonchalance “it’ll keep you here a week any how!” The Judge cut the precious narrative short. The city is full of influenza, which has been very severe and prevalent at the east, but is less so [here] – it is called the grippe and by some the Tyler grippe, from the fact that its being at its height during the Presidents late tour to Boston. (102/30)

 

July 13. The Van Zandt case has at length closed, with a verdict against the defendant of $1200. I confess to a feeling of regret at this result. My sympathies had become gradually enlisted in behalf of the poor fellow, whose whole conduct had grown out of opinions and feelings, with which every freeman must sympathise.

 

Strolling in the street this evening, I analysed the sounds, that filled the air. Music was the chief ingredient – at the Jews tavern hard by, in German – from the piano & voices in Mr. Jones parlor etc. Thus it is every where, these warm evenings, in Cincinnati. (102/34)

 

(The case of Van Zandt eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court, Jones v. Van Zandt, where he was again defeated.)

 

Walking along Vine Street with a friend named J. H. Bates one day, the two men spy “a pair of formidable French corsets” in a shop window. Taylor reports that they were “fringed with lace” and “immediately arrested our attention.” They stood gazing at the undergarments for a moment – in awe. 

At length Bates broke forth – “Good heavens!” said he, “is that the material of which women are made?” (102/33) 

On another occasion, Taylor hears a story about a little boy who, becoming angry with his mother for some reason, exclaimed, “Ma! I wish my father had never married you!” (102/34) 

July 19. We have had an interesting spectacle in the streets to day. The Wyandot Indians, about 700 in number, the last relic of a tribe in the North western part of the state, in removing beyond the Miss[is]sippi, passed through Cincinnati. There are some fine figures among them but most look low and brutal. They are half civilized, and their costume is not aboriginal mainly, although occasionally may be seen a trace of Indian finery – the women wearing hats, with tin bands and feathers. They leave tonight in two steamboats, chartered to take them to the Upper Miss[is]sippi. I hear that that many of them were dead-drunk on the landing this afternoon. They are the last of their unfortunate race in Ohio. A half-century has seen them completely supplanted and removed. (102/35-36)

 

July 23. [Taylor has a talk with] Gen. Price, the religious monomaniac, whom I have mentioned before in my diary. … I took some pains to draw him out. I satisfied myself, that he believes, that the “Ancient of days” will set up his spiritual kingdom on the banks of the Ohio, and is none other than his inspired self. He is sure that he is of Jewish extraction, among other reasons, because he “abominates swines flesh.” He insists that the “dispensation of the fullness of times” has come, in which, the law of human food as given to Adam in the garden of Eden, is binding upon all. This prohibits the use of animal food, “of anything that has ever had life,” but allows of vegetables. I remarked to him, that at this season of the year, his table would be well supplied, as I supposed that he would partake freely of all the fruits etc. now offered in Market. “Yes!” he replied, “all except the apple.”

 

Price also warns Taylor that tobacco is an abomination, and “that no one who uses the filthy weed can enter the kingdom of Heaven.” (102/36-37) 

Another day, the diarist passes by an open door and hears a speaker – in German – explaining to “a roomful of persons” a plan to move to Missouri. Ten thousand acres have already been purchased, “which are to be worked in common for several years, and when the whole is thus improved – then it is to be divided in equal portions by lot. A modified kind of Fourierism – or rather an imitation of the settlement at Zoar in this state.” (102/38) 

July 28. We have had a short visit, of a day and night from a Mr Riley [sic] of Hamilton – an old man of 80. He is beloved in the region of his residence, and remarked, that he was on the site of Cincinnati in 1789, when this valley was covered with beech trees, and a few cabins were placed in the openings of them, where they had been cut down. And all this within the experience of one man! (102/38) 

 

“Mob City.” 

August 2. A fellow by the name of [D. P.] Scanlan, traveling northward, was attended by a mulatto girl [Lavinea], his slave, who was decoyed away by abolitionists. For the last week, S. has been publishing in the daily newspapers and in handbills, silly complaints of this usage – yet appealing in an inflammatory manner, to the prejudices against abolition, of the people. His intention was at length consummated. Day before yesterday, a meeting was called in the Fifth St Market house at 5 P.M. Some 5 or 6000 were present. Several gentlemen addressed them, most of them, including the Mayor, deprecating violence, and urging the crowd to disperse. All this was in vain, for the numbers continued to increase until 8 o’clock when the mob attacked the windows and doors of one [Cornelius] Burnet[t], who keeps a confectionery shop, north side of Fifth St, between Vine and Walnut, so that the scene of this violence was but a few rods from Mr Stones. Just before dark, I was a passing under the building and was warned to keep away, and teams (next morning being market) were not suffered to stand in front of the doomed premises. A vast crowd filled the area, but these disgraceful proceedings were allowed to proceed uninterrupted till 10 o’clock, when the Mayor with a small police, made a sally, arrested several ring-leaders, and succeeded in securing them in the Watch House. Previously however, the windows had been demolished, and doors broken in, but a few of the mob, who attempted to rush forward through the breach, recieved [sic] rather warm greeting from above, in the form of boiling hot molasses, which was precipitated upon their heads. The rumor was prevalent that armed men were within, and the city authorities about this time beginning to wake from their stupor, the throng seems satisfied for the present with the effect of their missiles and dispersed. Next morning some 2000 people again assembled in front of Burnet[t]s and were becoming riotous, but the Peace officers were more numerous and efficient, and various arrests being made, the mob was cowed. By this time, the city had become alarmed, and the “horse having been stolen,” the authorities thought it necessary to show their “tardy promptitude,” by “locking the stable door.” …

 

Thus ends another of those outbreaks, which are fascinating on Cincinnati the unenviable soubriquet of the “mob city.”

 

(As editor Dunn notes, in just six years, Cincinnati had been rocked by mob violence three times: James G. Birney’s abolitionist printing press was destroyed in 1836. There were Irish-Negro battles in 1841, and a bank riot in 1842.) 

[Scanlan continues to issue handbills, calling for “justice.”] The mob must, it seems, be spurred on until he can get the girl in his clutch again. I hope in conscience that his folly will not meet a reward, so acceptable to his covetousness.

 

The abolitionists have no doubt been equal in meanness, but the opposite faction, the mobocratic, are equally and more to blame. I have no doubt that the Court would decide the girl free, if she was voluntarily brought within the state. But we shall see the issue of all this! (102/39-40) 

 

“Farewell Ohio, and her Brave!” 

August 6. An interesting incident is told of the Wyandots. While passing North Bend – the machinery of the boat was stopped, the tribe were gathered on the deck, facing the tomb of [William Henry] Harrison and remained uncovered while the current bore them past the spot. The silence was unbroken, until the Chief stepped forward, and with a parting gesture, exclaimed, “Farewell Ohio, and her Brave!” A cannon on board uttered a salute, the boat shot forward, and thus ended a scene, more fraught with poetic association, than often comes within our observation. (102/41)

 

September 10. Thursday afternoon I went to Hamilton by the packet – leaving here at 3 P.M. & arriving at H. by 10. Our route, while the daylight allowed of observation, lay through the Valley of the Mill-Creek. On each side of the canal extended rich and highly cultured bottoms, terminating in uplands of more diversified surface. I took tea on board, not only without nausea, but with considerable relish and approval – wiled the tedium of canal travel by reading “Nina” F[redrika] Bremers last novel, and amused myself at other times by the conversation of the Captain and my fellow passengers. The fare for a distance of 29 miles was only 75 cents. Hamilton is a pleasant, but quiet village. The streets are wide, and laid out with taste. In the center of the town, is an enclosed square, where stand the county buildings – very good structures. A fine bridge is thrown across the Miami River, and leading to the village of Rossville, which is even more populous and compact than Hamilton. There appears to be little stir in these places, but great expectations are entertained of benefits to be derived from an immense water power, obtained by damming the Miami River a few miles above, and which can be made available in several parts of the town, for the propulsion of an indefinite amount of machinery. (102/46)

 

September 21. Mr Guilford is about starting a new Whig daily paper, to be called the “Cincinnati Daily Atlas.” (102/48) 

 

“Millerism as a delusion.” 

Septr 25. Yesterday I went with Mr Jones to the place where the Miller tent is outspread. It covers an area of 200 feet in diameter, and will contain an immense crowd. While I was on the ground, it was thronged by thousands. … I remained among the Millerites the whole morning, interested by the appearance of the crowd, and listening with considerable interest to a sermon from a Mr [George] Storrs … About a year since I examined the subject, and satisfied my own mind, that these apprehensions are premature and groundless. All these lecturers assume that the power of the Church of Rome (Anti-Christ) was completely broken, overthrown in 1798. They must assume this, or all subsequent predictions have nothing to rest on. The fact is far otherwise. Almost within sight of their encampment, are going up the walls of a splendid Catholic Cathedral – a rebuke to their assumption, that the Downfall of the Roman religion occurred in the last century. This fact is sufficient to stamp Millerism as a delusion. (102/48-49) 

 

“Professionally, and avowedly, a flirt.” 

January 18, 1844: For four months, Taylor fails to update his diary. By this time, former President John Quincy Adams has visited the city. Taylor had been able to watch him pass below in the street, as he looked out the window of the home where he was staying. Adams, he notes, rode in an open carriage, the November sun “glinting” off “his shining bald head.” The diarist traveled to Columbus, hoping to improve his business prospects – perhaps join a law firm there. He mentions meeting “a Miss Lizzy Hensley,” a quick-witted girl, “an inexhaustible talker,” a young lady of “considerable although not remarkable beauty, and professionally, and avowedly, a flirt.” 

He is actually more impressed with her sister, Mrs. Starling, a married woman, intelligent, refined, and an interesting conversationalist. Yet, her figure has “grown out of all proportion – even her face has not escaped the effects of obesity.” Had his heart not been true to Chloe, he writes, he would have lost it to Mrs. Starling, “a woman that would weigh down three of me.” (102/52)

 

February 12: [The] German population is increasing among us, to an unprecedented degree. They are very industrious plodding people, they have stability of character – much goodness of heart, and many social virtues. I feel kindly toward them, and will not allow myself to auger evil from their presence here. (102/54) 

(The area north of the canal in Cincinnati – the canal now replaced by Central Parkway, became known as “Over-the-Rhine,” due to the heavy concentration of immigrants in that location.)

 

February 15. [Taylor reports that a small garden on the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets is being dug up.] It was owned by the First Presbyterian Church, and has recently been sold, and is being excavated, preparatory to building. I have interested myself in my daily walks, by noting the progress of what most would call improvement, but which seems to me very like spoilation. It seems that long since, that part of town was consecrated as a grave-yard, and many of the bones of early settlers have been exhumed and cast rudely forth, since this excavation commenced. I paused one day to look at some of these disturbed relics. A silent group were contemplating them, – all subdued into a reverent feeling of awe. I passed on, and so probably did they, forgetting too soon in some other engrossment, both the profanation, and its morality. (102/56)

 

March 23. The “end of the world” is expected to day, according to Miller’s horoscope, but so far (10 A.M.) every thing remains in statu quo – “no signs of wo, that all is lost,” so far as I have observed... (102/57) 

 

“The ball now set in motion, must roll its course.” 

April 4. [There is great interest in the town, regarding the possible annexation of Texas by treaty with Mexico.] Present indications are that the Constitutional majority of the Senate cannot be obtained to such a treaty, but the South is favoring the project – our interest points the same way and it is only the prevalence of an anti-slavery sentiment, and a reluctance on the part of the north, to increase the political predominance of the slave power in the Senate of the Union, which prevents the country adopting the measure by acclamation. It occupies the public mind to the exclusion of other political topics. I think that the friends of annexation will only exert themselves to postpone the consideration of the subject, and thus make it the great question before the people, during the next Presidential election.

 

… Provided always that the people of Texas desire annexation, the ball now set in motion, must roll its course… (102/58)

 

[He mentions an incident from April 1.] ... I was walking along Walnut Street, when my attention was arrested by the cry of a boy in great distress. It was so piercing – so agonized, that all who were passing stopped, and some hurried to the spot. Windows were thrown hastily open, and the neighborhood, having probably a proprietary right in a good many children, seemed thoroughly aroused. This was all our young actor desired, who bursting into a loud laugh, with a shout of “April fool,” scampered round a corner, sound in life, lungs, and limb. I witnessed several such pranks – among others, pulling a door bell – then retreating across the street, and greeting the servant by whom the door was opened, with a yell of derision. (102/59)

 

Taylor often mentions hiking out into the countryside for pleasure, sometimes to get away from the heat and dust of the city. On one hike, across the river, in Kentucky, he and a friend started from New Port [ now Newport], a village which he describes as “the most dilapidated – the most desolate, that I have ever encountered.” He and J. W. Ryland reach the top of a hill, where they enjoy a view of the Ohio River, and Cincinnati across the way. On their return they happen upon the cabin of an Irishman, “where we were furnished with a draught of water, declining our hosts hospitable offer of grog, praised his blue eyed children, which he pronounced ‘fresh from the Green isle’ – returned to New Port - recrossed the river, and reached home at sunset.” 

He also reports on the efforts of a Major James F. Conover to win the heart a Miss Norton. The Major is “about 50 years old,” the young woman, it seems, much younger. But 

… he could not have been more violently enamored. It showed itself at the most ludicrous times and places. The presence of others could not restrain the ardor of the Major – his manner was full of empressment, his eye of tender entreaty, as if meeting her “by moonlight, alone.” Indeed, I am told that he made a declaration in the crowd at Shires garden, and on the stage – probably for the dramatic effect. At any rate the scene had quite a numerous audience. I passed them about that time, and was struck with the Major’s supplicatory manner. Mrs Wright tells me, that although not accepted, and indeed meeting a rather discouraging reception, he still pressed a ring on Miss N. by dropping it in her lap, and on her refusing to take it up, remarking that “she might give it to the dogs,” for he should never touch it. Miss N. must have been very much flattered by the Majors avowing such a “second choice.” Miss Norton returned to Cleveland some four months ago – unengaged – yet having given Conover some encouragement. His presents were mostly accepted, and the Major followed them up with some very impassioned and elaborate correspondence. The siege has been so vigorously conducted, that he hopes now to carry the citadel by storm, and with that doughty resolution, has gone, trundling…[off] to Cleveland. What his success will be, remains to be seen, although the Wrights argue favorably for the Major. The town is gossiping away, very industriously, on the subject. He has lately built a fine house on 4th, lighted it with gas, furnished it tastefully, and now only needs a beautiful piece of statuary, to complete his decorations. … But enough of this love affair. A whole page, as I live, is already occupied with it, but as I have few opportunities of catching such a bit of gossip, I must arrest this one. (102/59-61) 

 

Taylor passes the examination to become a lawyer – but struggles to find a partner, and set up a law practice. He talks about his “straightened circumstances,” and groans, “If I had a $1000, or even $500, I would open an office immediately.” He considers writing to ask his friend, Charles A. Loomis, to leave Columbus behind, and come to Cincinnati, “bringing with him sufficient capital as furnished by his father, and we together open an office.” 

Neither this plan, nor several others come to fruition. (102/63) 

May 2. We were abroad, yesterday afternoon, despite my foreboding. It was a pleasant escape from the streets of a city, hot and filled with dust, to the fresh and grateful air of the country. We went up Race St, until we encountered a bold ascent beyond the canal, whose summit was fringed with woods. This we breasted, and rambled for some hours among the trees, which stand thick and stately, shadowing a large tract, whose surface is pleasantly diversified with hill & dale. Every part of the forest was vocal with the laughter of children, grouped pleasantly in every direction, with swings suspended from the branches of trees – their dinner baskets showing that the frolic had been afoot ever since morning. We rambled from party to party, drinking from the springs that gush forth at the bottom of the ravines – avoiding the young men and ladies, many of whom were out, but dashing into the freest acquaintances with the children – throwing ourselves upon the grass or fallen trunks – chatting, criticizing, speculating, on every possible subject.

 

Taylor has given much thought to the idea that Texas would be annexed – but wondered why the Texans would want it. 

But why will the Texans consent to this suicidal annexation. They might run a Southern line across the Continent, making California their great Western province, and thus build up a Republic, whose political weight would soon be felt in the great family of nations. (102/68)

 

May 3. We have the Texas Treaty and Tyler’s message by to-day’s mail. These documents first saw the light at New-York, surreptitiously obtained from Washington. The treaty is as was expected – Texas annexed as a territory – debt of $10,000,000 assumed, the vacant lands being relied upon as a fund to pay it, etc.

 

May 13. Mr. Chapin is here with thirteen of his pupils, including the two Chinese girls. He gives a concert this evening.

 

May 14. I attended Mr Chapins exhibition of the blind last evening. It was intensely interesting. The exercises in mental mathematics, including problems in the abstruser rules of Algebra – the articles of their manufacture – writing and reading by raised letters – music, instrumental and vocal – all were wonderful. There were few present, owing to the inclemency of the night, but those were delighted, and I foresee that by the ensuing Concerts (for several are to be given) public attention and interest will be very much aroused. (102/70)

 

(William Chapin was superintendent of the Ohio Institute for the Education of the Blind (1840-1846).

 

May 17. Every thing is dark – uncertain in my future – the various schemes which I have been indulging, prove baseless. …

 

I called night before last, on Taft and his family – passed a pleasant evening – talking politics with Mr. T. and chit-chat with the ladies. Mrs. T. has a younger sister with her, a good looking girl – made rather unfashionable however, and with little or no manner.

 

June 1. I supped with young [George Hunt] Pendleton last evening. … We had a sumpt[u]ous feast of strawberries and ice cream, pine apple, and wines. The evening passed pleasantly, until we left at midnight. (102/71)

 

June 3. News came yesterday by the river that James K. Polk was nominated for Prest and Silas Wright for Vice. … That he will be elected, no one can expect. The success of Mr Clay, it seems to me, is made certain by this selection.

 

10 A.M. Since writing the above, I learn that Silas Wright declines the nomination. Morses Magnetic Telegraph is constructed between Washington & Baltimore, by means of which, communication can be had instantaneously between the two cities. When the nominations were thus transmitted to Washington, Mr. Wright immediately replied by telegraph, that he could not accept. … By today’s boats, we may hear something further. 

(Edward L. Morse would later write that, “The conventions at Baltimore happened most opportunely for the display of the powers of the Telegraph.” (102/85)

 

5 P.M. The foregoing rumor turns out to be true. Mr. Wright persisted in his declension, and the convention, which had not yet adjourned, nominated G.M. Dallas of Pennsylvania – a man as inferior, to several of those named in the ballotings, as Polk is to Van Buren or Calhoun. … There was a Tyler convention at the same time in Baltimore. They went through the farce of nominating the acting-President. (102/72)

 

June 8. Looking over these pages, I am struck with the difference in tone, between these concluding passages and my first buoyant entries, so sanguine with the hopes and schemes of success. I trust that Chloe, if she ever peruses this record, will not think too contemptuously of me, because it is so. (102/73)

 

June 13. The Texas Treaty is rejected – 13 to 35 – I am not sorry. It outraged too palpably our peaceful relations with Mexico, and the accompanying correspondence was flagrant in its character, making our Government the propagandist of slavery. (102/72-73)

 

July 4. I hope to leave for home next week. I shall make an arrangement with Mr. Miner, by which I shall place myself in funds. Whether I shall remain here or go to Toledo, is uncertain.

 

… I am not well – listless – certainly in no mood for diary keeping.

 

August 19. I am sitting in Mr. Langfords parlor in Westmoreland [New York], the hand of dear Chloe linked in mine, and certain eyes, the brightest and best-loved in the world contriving to decipher these characters as I write.

 

Another potential opening in a budding law firm fails to materialize, though Taylor waits in New York for a month, hoping for a letter. With Chloe by his side, his disappointment, he writes, is “much alleviated by the mutual affection and confidence, that exists between us.” 

At the end of September, he returned to Cincinnati, where he will remain for several more years, and bring his new bride in 1845.

The city as it would have looked around the time Wickes lived there.
Picture not in blogger's possession.

 

 

Annie Cooper

(1881-1895) 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: The tortured romance which follows might interest students. Ms. Cooper’s reluctance to allow a man to kiss her on the lips would likely strike most as strange. 

I would wonder what they might make of Mr. Camp, the minister, and her first love, or Mr. Boyd, who seems to be a “cad,” (to use that dated term), her second and greatest love. 

Would they have a high opinion of Annie? Or consider her odd? In what ways does she sound like people they know today?

 

Annie Cooper, 15, began her diary in the summer of 1880. In Private Pages, the editor begins with an entry from December 1881. Years later, looking back on her youth, growing up in Sag Harbor, New York, Annie remembered, “What a jolly rollicing girl” she was. The boys she knew often took her along crabbing and fishing, because they said she was “as good as a boy.” 

In 1881, the year she turned 17 (December 11), she wrote, “I hate to grow up. My childhood has been so sweet, I hate to part with it.” Not until 1883 did Cooper begin to write more often. In her case, we shall post her diary to the year 1895, when a most agonizing romance finally reaches a climax. 

 

1883 

April 8. Home is the sweetest and dearest place to one in the world.

 

June 2. I went to Brooklyn to visit Annie Rhodes, had a lovely time, went everywhere nearly, stayed three weeks, went to my first ball, & a grand ball it was! & to four Theaters or Operas. I had plenty of fellows & attention, and all that sort of thing! I can’t begin to tell how I enjoyed it! I got me a new silk dress & hat, picked it out myself, & had a good time spending money generally, in all I spent $33.43 while I was away, & I did not buy many nickknacks either. Money melts in N.Y. Papa was so good and generous!

 

October 14. Since I wrote last in this book, my sister, my only sister, so loving, so true, so kind & yet always so cheerful has been married & left me to rule supreme in our room and in the house. I cannot realize that she is married, she has always been so kind to me, and so much with me that I have always considered her as young almost as myself. She was always the helper to Mamma in the house cares, I must try to fill her place. Oh! what a mountain it seems like! my filling her place! why simply impossible! but God helping me, I will fill it as much as it ought to be filled, I will be kind, loving, obedient, patient, & thoughtful, God help me. 

 

1884 

“I feel a peaceful joy.” 

December 7. 6 months since I wrote in this book, & today I have taken the boldest & best step of my life. I have joined the church, and I’m happier and feel freer than I ever did in my life before. I do not feel that wonderful, uncontrollable joy which some people talk about, but I feel a peaceful joy. What I longed to do for months and months, but no one had taken the trouble to speak to me upon the subject until lately when Mr. Camp, our minister, came to see me, also Puss [a friend]. I felt no great change, sudden and terrible but I do feel changed. I shall be 20 this week. I am so glad I have taken this step while I can say I am in my teens. I went to the young peoples meeting tonight, Mr. Camp might almost have asked me to speak, but I feel it almost wrong for women to speak in church, after reading what Paul says, I mean to ask Mr. Camp about it. I did not speak, & I felt awfully guilty, but still I don’t think I did wrong exactly, I read a verse though. 

 

1885 

“What he comes here for, is more than I can see.” 

February 7. This afternoon I have been skating on Crooked Pond! Oh, Oh, what fun! It is the most delightful pond anyway! the surroundings are lovely, & it is all turns & inlets & outlets, & islands! Oh! I just love it! We were a party of 12, & rode up in wagons, had a fire on one of the islands.

 

February 16. Mr. Camp has been down playing chess this evening, I beat him 2 games out of 3. What he comes here for, is more than I can see. For he does not pay scarcely any attention to Mama & Papa, & I surely know he does not care about paying any attention to me, for why should he a minister & a man of 43 years old, & a bacholor, care about coming here to play chess with me, a giddy young girl, scarcely out of my teens. It is a puzzle for me, for he never talks religion to me…It is very pleasant to have him come, I enjoy it of course, if he is goose enough to waste his time on me…

 

I was going to have such a nice time practicing to-night, it rained so hard, when he came & and of course, I practiced in another direction – coque – flirat – etc, chess I mean. He kindly informed me that I must not fall in love with him as if I had any idea of it!!! His conceit is unparalleled!!! I told him he should not have come here to-night, & I am sure I can’t see why he did!

 

February 28. I have been to church & Oh Oh what sermons! Mr. Camp seems inspired! when in the pulpit, but went out Oh! what a change, he is a “flirt” if ever I saw one, but the most innocent one! I have been riding with him to-day, over on North Haven, doing calls, on his parishioners, call it my first missionary tour, wonder if I will ever have another, I hope so, for although I detest his continual nonsense, still it is very pleasant to be talked to the way he talks. He is so charming…

 

April 15. Mr. Cook has been here to-night, much to Papa’s disgust, I don’t see why Papa doesn’t like to have either him or Mr. Camp call on me, & I can’t understand why he should mind such old foggies as they are, he can’t possibly think that I will fall in love with them. That would be too absurd!

 

April 25. That old – goose is gone. I ought to be ashamed perhaps to speak of my pastor like this & of course I wouldn’t for anything in the world to anyone but you, my dear, diary… But what a old – what shall I say – fraud he is! Comes here & take tea and flatter me just lays it on thick, & then flirt, & do all sorts of things that would be charming in any other man, but for a minister, – – ! Well, I don't know! run on in the most nonsensical way to Papa when he knows that Papa is feeling “blue”, not a word of spiritual advice, or comfort, & then go to church the next day and preach the most magnificent and wonderful sermon, that I or anybody heard, he put his whole soul in it too. …

 

Annie writes that she resents Mr. Camp’s  frivolity during visits, as if “he thinks me capable of no higher or nobler or deeper thought than those with which he favors me.” She says she resented his conduct on this evening. She continues, 

… I was actually ugly, I was so sarcastic, I could not help it, he rubs me the wrong way always. I don’t think, in fact I am sure he will not come here again very soon, he did not enjoy his two minutes of his time I’ll warrant, I was insulted in the first place by him when he first came in the room, that set me off for the rest of the time he put his arm around – – I mean I was fixing the string of the curtain, to pull it up, & it got fast, so I mounted the rocker & he came to steady it for me, but full of the mischief as he always is, he unsteady did it so that I almost fell into his “fond embrace”, – of course I was indignant, I just guess I was! However I wish he could come here oftener, if he has a mind to make a goose of himself I don’t care for myself but I hate to have Papa see him do so. And indeed he doesn’t see half, through my management. I screen him as much as possible.

 

April 26. Mr. Cook came down after church & made quite a long call much to my fathers disgust, after he left he actually threatened to tell him not to come again or have any thing more to do with me. Oh! Papa is too absurd! as if there could be any harm in Mr. Cook’s coming to see me & taking me to ride & sail! It amuses me so I almost split trying not to smile when he talks that way. Of course I don’t want him to see that I am laughing, but I can’t help it. Papa’s in earnest, & I don’t want to give up Mr. Cook’s friendship.

 

On another occasion, Mr. Camp takes Annie and a friend to a housewarming, but then goes “off with another girl,” and that leads to a “terrible, terrible, time, a real fight.” 

Two weeks later, they seem to have patched up their differences. 

May 29. Oh! Day most beautiful & rare. How can I express myself, Mr. Camp & I have been riding, we went to the “Lovely Long Pond Spring” & drank its waters, & made a wish there above the spring. Mr. C. was so “sweet”, you see dear diary, I don’t want you to think that I am in love with him, my minister 30 or I mean 43 years old. A “vieux garcon”. Oh! not at all! I assure you! I look upon him & he upon me in the light of true disinterested friends, it is pure Platonic Love that exists between us, nothing more or less. We converse about love freely, & we understand each other. But he is a great blessing to me, and I thank God for his great kindness in giving me such a friend.

 

I dare not put on paper the soft sweet words he tells me, if I were his “sweetheart” he could not say or act much more, but he knows I understand, and match him in that.

 

May 31. I love God & his love fills me with a love to all his creatures & all Nature. What did Mr. Camp mean when he said in soft sweet tones while he found my hand & pressed it gently, “I warn you against love, beware of love”? When out riding in the woods he talks of love to fellow creatures, but not to one creature? When picking violets he takes his seat at my feet & holds my hand (when I allow it) & repeats poetry about love? when he takes my arm and looks into my face, aye my eyes, & says the sweetest things imaginable, sometimes in French and sometimes in English? Of course he knows I know it is purely Platonic, but then it savors of flirtation too. He is a real good man, any way, pure & high & noble in his impulses.

 

June 2. I am not talented in music or singing or reading or talking. I could paint if I gave my time to it, but this [is] hard to do when one is not taking lecons. … I have no “sparkling wit”. I am not good looking, & although I do dress handsomely still it cannot make me attractive – Oh! dear, I am way up one day & way down the next & I am way way down to-day.

 

June 28. To-day, Sunday, I consecrate myself anew to Christ, & all my powers & energy, & I hencefourth leave Mr. Camp – I will have nothing more to do with him accept as my pastor, he has completely disgusted me, I shall not be “cosey” with him anymore. I feel hurt & pained to say so, but I must! So here goes good bye – – – Adonis! good bye!

 

July 30. Charlie [her brother] has been home, & Oh! Dear! I feel so very sad over him, he has taken to reading Darwin & Herbert Spenser & others of the same order, he partly believes in “Evolution”, and is investigating too far for his own good I am afraid. I must pray for him. I am going to read Darwin & H. S. myself to see what they are.

 

September 27. Yesterday was an important day with me. I took a ride with Mr. Camp, and fought the whole time, he made a remark to the effect that all the girls were in love with him etc, which just set me off, & I stormed & stormed, my indignation knew no bounds, I was just wild. I told him – my pastor – “that of all the men I ever saw he was the most conceited”. I wanted to have nothing more to do with him, (which is a big he) I guess it is all up with us now, for sure but I hope not.

 

October 3. Mr. Camp spent this evening with me playing chess. I enjoyed it immensely, but do not understand how it is that he – a talented 44 yrs old bachelor, & a minister can want to spend so much time on me, a green innocent, country maiden.

 

The following spring, Annie realizes that Mr. Camp has taken more of an interest in her close friend and writes, “I am wounded to my heart’s core.” She writes only two more times in her diary in 1886, in November, to say Camp “goes to Palestine. “Last week he did not come near me the whole week through, he evidently cares no more about me now than any one of ‘the flock.’” 

 

1886 

“I hate myself.” 

December 11. To-day is my ‘jour de naissance,’ I am 22 years old! I can not realize it. It seems as though I could not have it so, why I am actually getting old, shall be on the down hill side of life before long! I wonder if I’ll never marry! I wonder if I shall live to grow old!

 

Dear diary! He is gone! Yes! he is gone, & I played my role of indifference & coolness to the last, he came down to say good bye in the morning, with his eyes full of tears & his voice unsteady, he could scarcely speak, he pressed my hand long & lovingly, I just let him hold it, but otherwise I was: Stony! He probably thinks me the coldest & most ungrateful and uninteresting girl He ever saw, he little knew how I was longing to comfort him, & to unbend & be what I once was with him, but alas I could not! I hate myself, I am a perfect goose! The most unsatisfactory piece of flesh God ever made it seems to me. I long so to be what I am not.

 

She spends the last days of the year visiting her friend Annie Rhodes, in Brooklyn, and remains away from home until February 25. A new love seems to make an appearance in her diary: 

 

1887 

“Never was more disappointed in my life!” 

April 7. It was glorious! I certainly did receive much favor [in Brooklyn], was invited out all the time nearly, & had lots of beaux. Mr. Nilsson was all attention & Mr. Boyd was very polite to me and I expect they will both be down here [to Sag Harbor] this summer, that is they say they shall come, but I shall not believe it until I see them. Men are such fickle things!

 

April. I must confess I find these fellows here [in Sag Harbor] fearfully stupid. They don’t seem to know beans, & those that do, don’t care for me. I suppose, at all events, I won’t stoop for the sake of having a fellow, I don’t care enough about it for that, I will bide my time, when I will have a fellow to wait upon me after my own heart.

 

April 29. …there is not a soul in this whole world who seems to understand me.

 

July 7. Mr. Boyd came this noon.

 

July 8. Mr. Boyd was called back again to the city to-day very unexpectedly. Do hope he is sincere. What pesky luck I’ve had! It could scarcely have been farther from my anticipation.

 

Never was more disappointed in my life! … Everything went wrong almost. Never felt so flat over any thing in my life. Would not have believed Mr. B. so false & insincere, although. I imagined him to be weak, (– but a liar.) I was the biggest fool. Can not imagine what got into me to do so! I have no faith in any man. I long to find one who could be true.

 

September 21. Mr. Boyd paid me a short visit. He found me “head over heals” in paint. … He is very nice & handsome & the fool knows it, although I do like him very much, still I think he is just such a “snob”. I’m very sorry that circumstances should have happened as they did, but I can’t help it. It is a good test to his sincerity & friendship, a fellow who can’t stand a little paint & mosquitoes is not worth noticing. But I like him – so much!

 

A nearly “perfect” summer comes to an end, and Annie says she has had “plenty of beaux.” But she cares only for one man, who her friends describe as “a fashion plate.” That is, Mr. Boyd. She believes he has been put off by seeing her covered in paint and mosquito-bitten. 

October 12. ... I believed in Mr. B. as a pure honest, noble fellow. I like him better than all the other men I know –& while I am not in love with him – I would give the friendship of them all for his…when other fellows talk of love to me – it is so absurd – but his face Mr. B’s looms up & I can’t help it. 

Annie hears a rumor that Mr. Camp is engaged to her old friend, but writes, “well, ‘mebee he is, but I doubt it.’” 

 

1888 

“Are not we lost forever to each other?” 

January 13. I wonder why I’m such a stupid gump! Papa is smart & a thinker, Mama is all that is sweet, gentle & lovable in woman, yet I – their child, I’m an old stupid blockhead about most things! Pshaw!!! I am way down in the mind compared to where I ought to be. I hate myself. I am a complete failure anyhow! I wonder for what I was born sometimes!

 

…When it comes to talking trash, meaningless nothings, nonsense – then I can beat the monkeys in Central Park, I believe, & this so often when I really am thinking most of serious things!

 

Miss Cooper spends most of the winter in New York City again, but her romance with Mr. Boyd has seemingly failed. She writes: 

April 6. Are not we lost forever to each other? Is there any hope of reunion of sympathies? Any chance of mutual flow of soul again? Any possibility of again ascending the throne of perfection in his eyes? & yet it should be so. But I don’t see how it can ever possibly. I am humiliated beyond expression! I am filled with remorse, & yet – should I not be glad that I have escaped danger, that I have found out the true strength of character of the man, should I care about the friendship of a man who would throw over a girl for one fault, and when he was not sure of that either? … Mr. Boyd is the man I refer to – he cut me dead this winter – all because – (I suppose) the way I looked that day – paint & mosquitoes – Ah ! ----- alas, how frail is man, & how weak is woman. How uncertain & fickle is man. How false & unjust! But I ----- will be true to him, even though he has played me false! No world [sic] shall ever cross my lips against him! God grant us an explanation! – my heart is lonely & sad – ah! How I long for love. I have spent 9 weeks I guess in this city. I have studied at the studio again very hard, & very faithfully have been studying from life & from caste.

 

July 20. Good grief! If I haven’t had a pickle! Mr. Smith called on me this evening, his first call & I thought he never would go, what a sticking plaster!

 

I never saw anything to beat his stupidity! I thought I should have to ask him to go! half past ten! first call and such a quiet sober man! ginks!

 

September 7. Mr. Camp, The friend of my girl-hood, the pastor of my first years of communion, the sunshine of the village when he was here, the betrothed of my dearest friend…whom he was to marry in October, has cut his throat and jumped into a cistern where he was found dead.

 

September 25. Mr. Wick has been my special “affair” this week, we went sailing, & such fun, I “stole off,” in the sly, Mama knew not a thing of where I was going, or Papa. The novelty of being off with a young unmarried minister & indeed a – more than friend – a suitor – the thought that Papa knew nothing of it, and Mama ditto, and the responsibility of the boat in a wind, and the romance of the whole thing was – delicious. … [Wick] as good as told me that I am the girl he meant to marry. … He is a good young fellow of promise, but I could no sooner think of marrying him than I could think of flying! 

 

1889 

“I long to conquer him and bring him to me again.” 

September 25. Axel came to see me several times & we walked & talked & oh – how he did plead again, – that is the fourth time he has proposed to me & four times he has been rejected.

 

November 9. John W. Boyd! – ah! – what a winter of joy – also another winner of pain – does that name call up – I never liked man so well – surely – even now after two years of cruel silence – I long to see his pure noble brow – I  dislike his bigotted aristocratic notions, his snoberiness, & his pharisuical accounts of himself, but I love the memory of his sweet, blue eyes – so wistful & admiring – but of Axel – I certainly don’t think I can engage myself to him feeling this way about another – yet I am not in love with either – J.B. hurt my pride – and I long to conquer him and bring him to me again – not to marry him.

 

Her diary goes dormant for years. Finally, she and Mr. Boyd are brought together again, during a night of card-playing, at Euchre. 

 

1893 

“They lie – he is pure.” 

May 28. Shall I or shall I not add another page to this my long neglected diary. I have given it up long ago, three years since I’ve written in it and why – partly because I began to feel it was a useless waste of time & eyesight & partly because I was so sick at heart that I no longer had any heart to write – but lately, it has been heavy upon me to cast one more page into the record… I do not understand it – but this I do know that some how this man holds a sway over me I cannot shake off – for seven long years I have tried to forget – oh – why did I ever meet him? Why did I ever go to Brooklyn?

 

…

 

These years have passed – neither of us have married – the tie of friendship is renewed – but what does it mean – sometimes I ask myself am I the victim of a great passionate love, which can never die until I die – a love which shakes the very center of my being – ? only to be the toy of a man of the world? for they tell me he is such – & is not a pure man – They lie – he is pure.

 

… he is not a religious man – I know I should be unhappy to marry a man with whom I could not make a Christian home.

 

June 7. No letter from Mr. B. yet – he liked me “well enough” for a passing friend…

 

July 2. A letter from Mr. B. – he says he leaves for Shelter Island on Sat. next – & would like to “make his call” on the following Wed.

 

July 12. Mr. B. came to-day – I took him to drive to the Park. To-night – I took him sailing – I think I am a trifle disappointed --- altho – we have tomorrow yet in which to really get nearer to each other – & then I can better tell.

 

July 14. Rose at 5 a.m. to the gental sound of a peble & him seranade under my window – we went to the East Hampton Beach – it was glorious – we learned more & more of each other – got a good deal nearer – After dinner he came up & we were alone & talked – and say good bye – and a week from tomorrow – when he calls on his way to the city –

 

Annie gets her hopes up high again, only to see them dashed again. At year’s end, she writes again of her on and off ties to Mr. Boyd: 

December 28. I have been to Brooklyn, with its delights in the social way. Mr.  B. was very polite to me in the city – yet it is absolutely certain to me that he does not care for me – no man who would let the woman he cared for go away with no more manifestation of right, no seeking for her company in the future, no request to write, etc – Surely he does not think I could be satisfied with that cold, easy passive sort and call it love – never, I am capable of grand passion – the night of my birthday eve, I cried, and sobbed until I was weak – I struggled and agonized with this thing – & finally after hours of torture I took away his portrait locked it away in my private draw with all his things – & resolved to forget – to strangle & drown this fearful fearful grip he has had upon me – I will bury him from my life – forever – I’ve kissed his photo – once – & for the last – & hid it from my sight –  & now it only remains for me to be brave – & forget – God help me – for I feel my weakness – I am at best only a woman – I leave the problem of my life in His Hands to solve.

 

NEW YEARS EVE. The family have gone to service – I like staying home with my thoughts, I wanted to be alone a few moments & ’ere the old beloved year died I wanted to hug it a little – it has been so sweet – but only a little for I dare not trust myself – Six years ago to-night I met him – One year ago & I had no hope of ever seeing him to speak again – to-night I am full of enjoyment of his friendship – & yet I am fighting the old fight to forget him – if he knew – I wonder would he pity me – I could not bear that – no he must never know – cut out my tongue first! He sent me a magazine – how I sulked off by my self on the shore & found a big rock & there greedily devoured it –  & gloated over the marked places as if trying to make them tell me his thought. I’m sure he cares not – his cold calm passionless friendship is the most deadly thing he can give me – & yet I want it – & I wish him well. 

 

1894 

“Is bliss akin to pain?” 

February 5. Mr. Boyd came again to S.H. to-day. We have been sleighriding all the after-noon – I wonder if I am liking him less – I almost hope so – and yet – if I but knew him better – he certainly impressed me less today – I think – I don’t think he has a fine face – not good indications of many of the traits of character I like best – but I may be mistaken – want to get at Mr. B.’s religious views – and I must tomorrow –

 

On Friday morning – I was convinced he was pleased with his visit but was not in any sense in love – or particularly interested – but at night I received a letter written from the hotel – in which he strikes a higher note than he has ever put in words – I am a little doubtful now as to his position of indifference, but I – am I becoming indifferent – to be sure his coolness has driven me to the verge of rebellion & I wonder if I am finding out that I have been mistaken that I am not in love with him – only with an ideal J.B. I must find out – for I would not hurt him – & I must be careful now what I do to encourage or discourage – Oh that Mr. Wick would come upon the scene that I might compare them and know finally which is the man – Do I approve of him – his aims in life? What are they? I cannot marry a man whose aim is “social success” - that may be alright for some – but not for me –

 

February 14. Such a lovely valentine came to-day from Mr. B. …

 

February 27. Gardie was down to tea last night with his girl Maud – and two such happy mortals you never saw! He positively couldn’t keep his hands off of her. I think they were absolutely ridiculous. I like demonstration – I like affection – & affectionate people – but I don’t like to see the thing made too common for vulgar curiosity to laugh at, for the world to jeer at – & Gardie is certainly a bit too much for good taste – I have been wondering if with all their show of devotion if the love was any deeper than mine would be – for I know I should not act like that before people – nor behind them either for that matter – I wonder if ever the time will come when J. B. will feel the right to place his hands on me as Gardie does on Maud – I feel as if I should choke to think of it – why I feel as if I should die of it – what – the pain of it or the bliss of it, which is it – Is bliss akin to pain? – oh – goodness – It makes me breathe hard for I feel as if I was going to smoother – at the very thought – for he never has laid so much as his little finger on me – & even a shake hands makes me feel all creepers – I don’t see how I should ever stand a caress – & yet I could have even longed to lay a cool gentle kiss upon his fair open forehead – what a queer mixture of passion & mood & hopes we are –!

 

I don’t suppose he ever thinks of these things – & yet I bet he has kissed many other girls – & hugged them to – but not a shadow of familiarity has he even offered me – I respect him for that – and yet at times his coldness drives me wild. I wonder if there is any other girl in town who has had the lovers I have had – who have kept sacred their lips & their person – for the one who at last may succeed – ? Whenever they have begged for favors always – his blue eyes – & pure brow would rise up – & although I knew I might never see him again – yet I couldn’t let them place their lips upon mine – I may be silly – no doubt I am. Most girls take those things naturally & all they can get – but I can’t – it seems like being false to my womanliness…I shall let no man but one give me my first lip kiss – and if not he – then no man –

 

March 18. One year ago this week – we met – what a joyous year – ! How I have enjoyed his friendship! Clouds seem to be trying to gather, letters from Mrs. Conklin and Annie R. saying – Oh Annie – drop him – he is not worthy –! They like him for me as a friend – but they hear rumors – they hear that his Mother is talking & that she thinks I am rich – (I know he doesn’t for I have told him so – & I don’t care what she thinks) – I have a very small opinion of her – a proud – haughty – extravagant, vain, woman! a woman who lacks the innate refinement of a lady born – she savors of the new rich kind – of pork & pomposity – Oh – I wish he was not her son.

 

March 24. I wonder if he will send me an Easter Greeting – why should he – & yet if he cares – as I do he will – I must not send him anything – it must come only from him – he is a man – I only a woman & must wait – I cannot & will not ever put him under the slightest necessity to do me a courtesy – He must woo – if he wants to win – he will –

 

May 26. He never seems to care enough for me to put himself out in the least – he takes things as they happen – not seeks or make an effort to get to me – now he came here last summer – but only when it was his vacation – he came here last winter – but on his vacation – not a Sunday since our before – he says he is coming this summer – on his vacation – now I am tired of this sort of thing – I am not a vacation girl – if he does not care enough to come down for a Sunday – I think he cares very little. … For his sake I try to keep my mind & thoughts clean & pure – I try to be what I think he would have me – & oh – how can I write it, the foul charge A. R. made against him – that he keeps a bad woman N.Y. – & that he is a man of the world entirely – & also that he laughs to people about me & says he can marry me for the asking! No. I don’t believe he said it.

 

June 2. Have received a letter from him – in which he says – he wants to be considered my truest and best friend – and I must not murmur if he desires to devote all his time to me – Oh – what joy and peace that letter has brought – how my soul leapt for joy – !

 

September 5. Words – words – words – what vain things when the heart is on fire to express a world of meaning – I have so much to say I cannot say it – this is the most eventful summer of my life – at once the most anxious and the happiest – I have so many events to record I scarcely know where to begin – Papa ill – unutterably sad – this passing away of the aged – dear dear Papa – how I yearn to make him young – then underneath, it all – there has risen a great and holy joy a deep sublime sweetness – a wonderful, unexpected, – unspeakable joy – for on my third finger of my left hand flashes a beautiful diamond pledge of my own true love – what is it I am writing? It sounds like a myth!!! … I know he is not what I thought I was looking for – he is not rich, he is not handsome, he is not witty – nor yet brilliant – he is not a man of position in the eyes of the world – he is simply & only John Boyd – a man from Greenpoint – a wage winner – a good – honest - noble man.

A stylish young lady - 1890.

 

Annie Cooper and John Boyd were married on February 20, 1895, and the marriage lasted for forty years, until his death in 1939. 

She would later admit she was afraid her diaries might fall into the wrong hands. Yet she also hesitated “to burn it up.” 

Looking back on what she had written, in old age, she would say, “I have laughed until I ached over the first books. The others are written in blood, so vitally real they are to me. Yet I cannot realize I am the foolish child, so full of human passions of all kinds that it reveals.” 

They had two children, a boy and a girl, who went off to successful careers. 

 “Marion Taylor”

(1912-1920) 

“Marion Taylor” was born in 1902 and began keeping a diary in 1912, with three entries. Her next entry would not come for eighteen months. As Penelope Franklin, the editor of Private Pages explains – a book this blogger can recommend – the names in her diary, including “Taylor,” have been changed. 

The diarist notes in 1913, that her parents have split up. “Dear Diary: We are living in Glendale [California] now. Papa doesn’t live with us anymore, but we are living very happiley in a beautiful little house.” 

Later still, she adds, “After ten or eleven years of married life my father decided that he must be free to marry his pretty sixteen year old office girl and insisted on a divorce… It was a great blow to my mother. I remember hearing the news from her as she lay weeping in bed that Papa didn’t love her anymore and that we were going to move away.” 

There’s a second gap, then Taylor picks up in earnest. Franklin picks up the diary the day Taylor turns 13.  

 

1915

“Papa…says colledge isen’t good for girls!” 

February 9. Dear Friend, today I am thirteen (13) years old! I am in my teens. I had the I.Q. up and oh the fun we had! What I.Q. means has never been written on paper until now. As a great secret I will tell you what it means. It means Ingenious Quartet. … We had a beautiful birthday cake. There was a dime, a thimble, and a ring baked in it.

 

Charlotte Foote [one of the I.Q. girls along with Ruth, Molly, and Marion] got the dime, Caroline [her sister] got the ring and the thimble wasn’t found. I was in hopes I’d get it cause I am going to be an old maid. I made a solemn vow never to be married this morning and intend to keep it.

 

I feel very aged today. I am in my “teens”!

 

March 22. Today  what do you think happened? It fairly stunned me. I can’t realize it. A horrible tragedy. The girls (Ruth and Molly but not Charlotte) went and, for some mean and unaccountable reason told Miss Green [one of her teachers] that I was crazy over her ect.

 

April 20. One time I went into show M. G. a book on leaves of mine and the other girls (the big horrids!) all of them followed me in and stood acting only as girls can, giggling and laughing at me until I could hardly keep my self-control. My face was as red. I just rushed out and came as near bauling as I have.

 

April 22. If I ever am fool enough to marry I shall marry a quiet grave, serious, man; literary in his tastes and a great deal older than I. If I ever have children I want my baby (I hope I don’t have more than one!!) quiet and the kind that likes to be cuddled and loved and not a rembunktious kid like some.

 

May 15. I have been thinking...I want a college education. Miss Green has a college education. I am afraid I can’t be a Natural Science teacher which is what I especially want to be without it. Well that is all in the faraway future!

 

June 14. Papa is going to be married again sometime this month and it is only on the 8th of this month and he gets the final divorce decree and can get married! Do you wonder that I am determined to be a Bachelor maid?

 

June 15. Oh I can never settle down to a quiet married life and work in the monoteny. You get up in the morning and do dishes three times then go to bed again with a vision of countless days just the same. If I had to look forward to a life of it! 0h! My hope and salvation is next fall – school.

 

June 23. My ambitions are daily reaching higher. A college education now. Papa tells me to get that “bee out of my bonnet”. He says colledge isen’t good for girls! Nonsense! I’m not going to be a “wifie” and household drudge!

 

August 7. I don’t take any interest in my clothes at all and it makes mother so mad.

 

August 16. My nose is the trial of my life. It is big and shapeless and usually pimpeled and always red.

 

September 13. SCHOOL! It has begun! I’ve looked forward to today all vacation. Miss Howe was just lovely and darling but Miss Green beats her to smash. She held my hand all the time she was talking and was so nice to me! We talked abought fifteen minutes in the hall.

 

A Few of the Most Important Rules for the New School Year.

 

Smile! Smile! Look animated and pleasant. You are an awful lemon when you don’t.

 

Be sure of yourself. Be confident in yourself. Just think who you are and throw back your shoulders.

 

Be very very neat in your personal appearance. A lady is always neat!

 

Speak low and softly.

 

Don’t show off.

 

Say pleasant things about people. Never say unkind things.

 

 

October 14. I’m five ft. five and I only weigh 99 lbs. 

 

1916

“I’m going to be pretty.” 

January 8. Miss Green told us yesterday, to say each morning before we get out of bed: “I am so glad I’m alive”! And on rainy mornings to say it twice.

 

January 24. When we graduate from Intermediate we will have a class party. And at these parties the boys take the girls. Mother says that I can’t go with any boy! It isn’t the boy that I want but all the other girls are going with them and I don’t want to be the only one and the only one left out. I simply won’t go to the party at all if I can’t go like the other girls! Maybe fourteen is too young but I don’t care.

 

There was one girl this year that refused to go to the party with a boy and everybody is talking about her and calling her a pig. I’m not so specially anxious to go with a boy but I don’t want to be the only one that doesn’t and be a wall-flower. The other girls are all going and they laughed at me when I told them what mother said. I won’t go to that class party at all then! I’ll let them think I’m ill. I won’t be talked about and pitied by an outsider!

 

February 3. I’ve got a glorious secret…It’s this: I’m going to be pretty! I feel it in my bones and see it in the mirror. I’ll never be a raving beauty nor very pretty but I’m going to be nice looking. I’m not vain – I’ve been homely for so long that the promise of looking better is mighty nice. Even mother said “Youre getting better looking every day!” And one of the neighbor ladies said (it was very much exaggerated!) “Why Marion is getting positively beautiful!”

 

I think it’s just because I’m young and girlish looking, and healthy and happy. Every girl wants to be nice looking and I certainly do!

 

February 9. Just think! I am fourteen. Papa sent me a lovely bag. And then in the evening Miss Green came. After dinner we sat around the fire and she had me sit in her lap.

 

February 21. Papa hasn’t written us forever so long nor sent our allowance and I’ve written him three letters. He makes me tired! Oh I wish we didn’t have to depend on him for everything and then we wouldn’t have to “keep on his good side” and humour him all the time!

 

April 2. What I said quite a long time ago about how I thought I was getting nice looking is all a fake! I’m just as puggy and smuggy as ever and lankier and sicklier and sallower and there’s no getting around it. … I’ve got some brains anyway even if I don’t look it! Well, I’m not crippled or disfigured and I might be worse.

 

May 15. My average of 96 and 3/4 is the highest in all the class! I tell you I’m mighty proud. … I’m not popular nor cute, nor attractive or interesting or pretty. And I’m not in the [class] play (which is a very high honor) nor in the Glee club so why should anyone begrudge me this.

 

June 17. Miss Green came this evening for dinner. [Marion has had a fight with her best friends. She has been sulking, or keeping to herself, and her teacher believes she should make up. Miss Green says:]  “The girls – not the I. Q. only, but all the girls at school like you and admire you so much but you seem to repel their advances You have a great influence for good with the girls if you only will, Marion. It isn’t right you should keep all to yourself. The teachers and the girls think so much of you. You are a sweet, lovely, darling girl, but people who do not know you will misunderstand you. I’ve never been more interested in any girl I have known, Marion, and I am telling you this because I am so interested in you. I want to save you the heartache I suffered when I was in High School. I was miserable because I couldn’t find one girl who was congenial. Just love all the girls and look for the best in them.” That is what she said as near in her words as I can remember. She held my hand and she was so kind and loving and what she said meant so much more in her own dear voice than it does when I write it down.

 

June 21. (I think our heaven or hell is made right here on this earth by each individual.)

 

July 13. Caroline was at Papa’s [office] all day yesterday. He asked her if she wouldn’t like to live with him. Wasn’t that mean of him! He’s trying hard to get her.

 

July 16. I affirm my four greatest wishes. I am unselfish. I am healthy and strong. I am charming. I am wise with a keen mind. … Now with mother I never kiss her and I’d feel dreadfully silly if I hugged her or anything, though I love her more than anybody else in the world. But with Papa I could kiss him and act soft and never mean a thing by it nor think of it. I haven’t a spark of love in my heart for papa sad to say though from outward appearances I might love him like everything. And Caroline to. I love her a lot in spite of her bickering, but I’d no more kiss her! I’m a funny girl I guess.

 

August 19. The only thing I like about Marion Taylor is that she’s got a good bit of brains – at least I think so. 

 

1917

“I’m afraid to grow up – I’m a coward.”

 

May. All the miracle of nature and life, and love, that is my idea of God. … I’m afraid to grow up – I’m a coward…

 

September. Mother gets shocked at some of my infidel views.

 

October. They got out the honor list of people who will receive pins and everybody is asking everybody else whether they are going to get one or not. And I’m not, and Ruth is, and Mary and everybody else with the slightest brains. You don’t know how ashamed I feel. It’s awfully humiliating, and I feel murderous to Ruth [one of the four I. Q. girls] – she acts so mean about it. She acts very condescending and patronizing and I could slap her!

 

Well, while I was feeling in this sweet mood, we had a big spelling match, and trust me to get spelled down and Ruth to carry off the honors. So I sulked like a baby. … I’ve lost all respect for myself…

 

November. Oh and wouldn’t it be lovely to meet a young man (when I grow up) that was real serious-minded and that cared for intellectual things and liked me and I liked him and he liked scientific things and books and we’d have so much fun nosing around in museums, art stores, and bookstores… and we’d travel and write nature books, and after quite a while have a little girl to spoil and bring up all sweet and dainty. 

 

1918

“I hate Miss Green!”

 

January 1. How on earth do people like me when I’m such an awful cuss?! Of course people outside of the family don’t see much of my selfishness and meanness, but I act so unpleasant with the girls; I rant and rave and hate everybody, but a few people. But Charlotte and Mary like me best!

 

January 16. Miss Green called up this evening. And what do you think! She said “Do you want to trade photographs?” Won’t that be great! She talked about Mr. Wood. Darn him! (That’s the man that likes her you know!)

 

January 22. It was not very long ago that I believed in angels and hell etc. – but how impossible they seem now! I think heaven and such things are two grand and wonderful to be all figured out down to such details – such material details as wings and gold in the streets – I think man’s mind is not capable of realizing the truth – only such truths as we need here – and unselfishness is about as much as we can handle here – I cannot accept any ideas at all about God or the next world – either orthodox or otherwise – because why should we have discovered the truth when millions before us have not.

 

February 4. A girl was telling me that she kept a diary – she said she had such a dreadful time trying to think what to put in it. I’ll venture hers runs “Got up at 7 – ate breakfast, had mush and biscuits, went to school came home, etc.”

 

February.  I don’t want to go to heaven; eternal bliss sounds rather stupid.

 

February. I just hate Miss Green! I’m mad at her forever. I’ll never like her anymore. I met her tonight, and I haven’t seen her for a month, and she nodded and wouldn’t walk with me and was utterly hateful. She thinks she’s too good for other people! She was rude. I just hate her! It’s absolutely sickening the way I’ve acted over her. I’ve absolutely no more interest in her. I tore up her pictures and packed away everything that reminds me of her!

 

September. I wrote papa a while ago, about how I wanted to go to college, and a little concerning my opinions on matrimony. I got some letter from him today. He said if I wanted college, I should have to get it for myself, and that I took life too seriously, and that when the time comes “he” will care more about the cute little curl behind my ear than for my opinions on the whyness of the unknowable, if he loves me as he should. Those are his very words. What do you think of that for a father’s words to his daughter. Oh more than ever I realize that if I marry it must absolutely be a serious-minded congenial man. How terrible to be married to an “animal” that cared only for your physical charms – a silly thing, that only thought about the “cute little curl behind your ear.” Makes me positively ill to think about it!

 

October. Papa was here today. I wish I could never see him again for years. He is absolutely boring – his conversation is so empty – he is so silly, so boyish, so conceited, has no ideals, etc. I have no affection for him whatever. I just can’t help it. He is physically disgusting. Isn’t it dreadful for a daughter to feel so!

 

December 25. Papa has given us such a nice Christmas this year. Besides the money, he bought Caroline a Christmas tree and trimmings, and this evening he brought over a great basket of fruit and some bacon and eggs. He stayed for dinner. He has taken a great deal of interest in us girls lately, and has seemed less boyish. 

 

1919

“I long for Romance – maybe that’s it.” 

February 9. Today was my seventeenth birthday and the long looked forward to event came off, to whit, Miss Jarvis’ [her teacher’s] visit. I had an agonizing time manufacturing conversation.

 

February. I’ve laughed myself sick today. I took a couple of my first story notebooks that I wrote in the seventh grade to school to show Henrietta. I hadn’t read them for a long, long time, and we read them together in study period. It’s just as if I had never written them, and oh they are so funny. They’re rich! Such a mixture of romance and ridiculousness (if there is such a word) and so trashy and sentimental. The spelling is wonderful to behold! Oh, they are screams. Henrietta nearly split laughing and Miss Jarvis changed my seat for disturbing the peace.

 

February. Latin is over!!!! two years and a half of suffering ended today. I shall proceed to forget it all.

 

April. There are only two boys I have ever known that I admired or respected in the least and they are far from perfect. All the other boys I have ever seen are big, foolish, conceited, empty-headed babies. These two are fairly grown up boys – they have thoughts and ideas of their own, and are not afraid to express them.

 

April. I long for Romance – maybe that’s it. The Romance over Miss Jarvis is altogether too one-sided. I wish some other Romance would come my way. I never, never got so worked up about Miss Green! I am half ashamed to confess it diary but I want some Romance in the form of the detested sex!!! …

 

Now listen diary. Supposing that it could be possible for one of the Right Kind to enjoy my company if I knew him and he knew me, why how to go about it? I assure you I’m not so anxious as to go after them. But I should very much like to know a congenial boy and I do want a little excitement. I want it awful, awful bad.

 

April. In sewing I was making a pair of drawers – they were in two pieces and I hadn’t the slightest idea how they went together and when I went to join the pieces together, I found that the ruffles, instead of being around the legs, ran up the middle of the front and back! My teacher thinks I am an inspired idiot. I’ve spent four periods, ripping those ruffles out. I spend most of my time in sewing ripping things out. How I hate sewing. It really drives me wild.

 

June. Mother is working again. She comes home at night just worn out, and yet she will work period she’s just wearing herself out. Papa won’t give us more money. And it makes me so mad to think she has to work like that. And she worries and worries to make ends meet and is pessimistic and nervous.

 

July. I have decided never to get married. I’m quite discouraged. Mother says that when a woman marries, she must submerge her personality. I think that’s bosh. I don’t intend to submerge mine. She says it’s all nonsense to think I could ever meet a man who cared for books and the things I do. I don’t think it is. Marriage would be Hell if the man wasn’t congenial.

 

Mother won’t let me read. I have to sew. I simply hate to sew, and I don’t accomplish anything. I am so lazy. I don’t like to move around, I hate housework. I just like to read and write. It’s awful. Oh dear. Why am I so awful. Why wasn’t I a man. I suppose I would be a poor sort of man, too.

 

August. It gives me great satisfaction to catch my thoughts on paper where they can’t get away, though goodness knows they’re not valuable and it never does any good.

 

September 15. I have one wish – a Twentieth Century Maiden’s Prayer. It’s something which I cannot realize through any efforts of my own – something the charm of which is in its coming to one. Romance!! Oh that it may come this year! Mildly of course. Really one’s high school course is not complete without a little wee bit of Romance. I’ll be eighteen in February. I want some boy to like me. I wish I were a man, but since Fate has decreed otherwise I want to make a thorough job of being a woman!

 

…I do think that marriage is a bad proposition, and that if one used her head and not her heart, she wouldn’t get married.

 

October 1. It’s so humiliating to one’s pride to like a boy when he is not interested in you.

 

October 6. I have fallen hard. I do not think for a moment that I am in love in the mildest degree with that boy (never having spoken to him in my life!). I am in love with Romance and excitement.

 

October 7. Oh diary! Such exciting things happened today. I spoke to him! Diary, I must confess all, though I blush to do so. The latter part of noon he goes in the history room and studies all by his lonesome. And so do I! I haven’t dared speak to him until today.

 

It was about 5 minutes before I dared say anything. At last I blurted out this profound and brilliant question: “Do you think Mr. Howe will give us that test he threaten?” Nearly choked me – my heart was in my mouth. He looked surprised but responded bravely. We discussed Mr. Howe’s merits as a teacher, and ancient history as compared with modern, the cultural value of history, and kindred subjects. He talks so well! He is so serious minded. He loves history. He has so much poise. He is so handsome. I’m wild about him. He says “hello” every time we meet, now.

 

October 17. Oh this is the life! This is real life. I must, I will get acquainted with Harold Pomeroy!!

 

October 20. My romance progresses slowly, but it progresses. Any other girl than me would have progressed as far as I have in 5 weeks, in one day. But I am new to the game. I have learned valuable information. I’ve learned that the discussion of the cultural value of history and kindred topics, will not get one very far, no matter how clever and apparently serious-minded the gentleman may be. I’ve learned that one must talk vivaciously, and on such subjects as foot-ball. One must laugh and talk about trivial and foolish things.

 

October 21. I am getting  awfully silly! All I think of is Romance. H.P. makes me mad! He is so utterly indifferent. I wish, oh I wish someone, I don’t care who, would fall violently in love with me. I’m tired of being violently in love with people who don’t give a rap for me. 

 

1920

“Where are the thrills?” 

June 7. Papa came over and staged the biggest farce that was ever pulled off. He arrived in an apparently fainting condition, gasping for breath and saying that the doctors had said he couldn’t live a year at the rate he was going now. Said I would have to get out and work. He couldn’t support us any longer. But in a little while he recovered completely from his dreadful condition, and was laughing and cutting up with Caroline just as usual. Oh the dirty hypocrite! He told mother that I must get out and work in a telephone office. He would not support me through college or Normal He was very decided and stubborn about it. … unless mother can get permanent work of some kind I shall have to get out and work, and give up school I must have Normal at least. I will have it.

 

How I despise my father. No doubt his health is bad, but mother isn’t half as strong, and she works much harder. He has always been opposed to higher education.

 

A 1920 Lincoln Continental.
Picture not in blogger's possession.

  

June 19. I got a letter from Miss Green this morning. She is going to bring that young man she spoke of once before, to graduation and make him take me home afterwards! She’s awfully romantic! In spite of the fact that I know the gentleman (his name is Mr. Trevor and he’s 22), is doing the escorting by compulsion I am very much excited.

 

June 24. Well, Mr. Trevor called. I must admit I was disappointed. He is short and has a little bullet head and stiff yellow hair closely cropped, and a red face. It was rather embarrassing having to introduce ourselves. I felt so awkward and uneasy. I don’t know how to meet the ordinary little gallantries. He sprang at me to help me on with my cloak, and I didn’t want it on in the least and got so flustered. And he edged around for the outside of the sidewalk, and I forgot that the gentleman is supposed to do that and I nearly knocked him off because I started to walk on the outside too. At last he fell all over himself and I knew my family was enjoying the spectacle immensely from the window! And crossing the streets he would seize my arm in a vice-like grip and shove me over. I talked a blue streak – because I was afraid to keep still. I dread those awful silences. He wouldn’t talk much. He isn’t a bit interesting or unusual.

 

Well it was the first time I have ever been escorted anyplace by a fellow, and where are the thrills?!? I fully expected to be thrilled to the core. And I wasn’t a bit. I was just rather excited and rather ill at ease. Isn’t Romance thrilling after all? So I’m so surprised and disappointed! What if Romance isn’t anything after all!

 

We discussed politics on the way home. I was embarrassed half to death when we reached the house. Do you ask ’em in? I didn’t. I walked in and he followed. That’s him – he follows! Do you ask ’em to sit down. I didn’t. I wanted him to go, it was so embarrassing. I made various lame remarks and there were several harrowing pauses. He asked for my phone number and said he’d call me up some evening. I breathed a sigh of relief when he was gone. I hope to goodness he doesn’t call. An evening talking to him would bore one to tears. He is engaged in the manufacture of soda pop and ginger beer!!!!

 

July 2. Well, this diary is full. It was just big enough for my senior year. It has had a happy happy year to record. I shall feel quite lonesome in a big empty new diary!

 

Let’s go back to the first page a minute. There is a noble resolve to be less self-centered and broader in sympathies. Has it been achieved. Yes, I think it has to quite an extent. But not so much through any efforts of mine. It just came naturally and pleasantly. Opportunity for development we need does come naturally I think. Isn’t it a wonderful thing that it does.

 

And as to the Twentieth Century Maidens Prayer – the Maiden has learned a lesson or two and doesn’t waste her time praying for such things. She has been cured of her foolish desire – no, not cured, but she can behave herself and wait. Her prayer wasn’t granted, but the desire was taken away, which amounts to the same thing in a way. But she hasn’t lost her faith in Romance after all.

 

                                                                                              Goodbye 

 

At U.C.L.A., Franklin says, Marion continued to talk about men she was meeting. In 1922, she took an interest in Jack, a pre-med student in one of her zoology classes. They married in 1933, but neither wanted children. 

Marion admitted to a few friends, years later, that she was a lesbian. She died “rather suddenly of a heart attack,” as Franklin writes, in 1960. 

She was 58. 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: As I have mentioned, I’m a retired teacher. Some of the suggestions I offer on this blog, I know worked in my class. I didn’t read Private Pages, until after I retired, but the book of women’s diaries might interest some of your pupils. 

   Certainly, these two examples – with young women not sure they should even kiss boys – and not knowing about intercourse, sound strange to modern ears. 

   Otherwise, the young women of a century ago sound in many ways no different from the people who enter classrooms today.

BLOGGER'S NOTE (11/28/2024): Get parental permission first, of course. This is the heyday of book banners, as you surely know.

Yvonne Blue

(1926-1927)

School “is a seething red-hot hell.” 

Yvonne (Eve) Blue was born on May 9, 1911. She started her diary at the age of 12. In Private Pages, Penelope Franklin begins the edit with 1926, when Yvonne was fourteen. 

 

1926

 

January 16. When I read a diary I want to know just the errors the author made, and the personal parts and so forth. It’s not fair. They would leave out my pet parts and write a lot of junk in the front about me, and make me seem silly and sentimental and senseless. I don’t want anyone to have fun out of what I sweated for, and after I am dust and ashes.

 

February 28. Yesterday I drove to Chicago Heights with Daddy, and when we were halfway there, Daddy stopped the car, and showed me how to work it in first and neutral, and then he let me drive! [She’s fourteen.] He is going to teach me how to drive, and when I am 16 I can take it out alone. Someday I can have it for my own. I adore to drive.

 

March 5. This afternoon I went to the dentists to have my teeth filled. I took gas. It was so queer! I was scared to death, when he stuck a big thing over my nose, and told me to breathe deeply. It had a queer dark red-brown smell too. At first I didn’t feel anything, and then all of a sudden I felt all tingly, – like my foot had gone to sleep, only all over. I seemed to be sinking down and at each breath I took I sank down deeper I lost consciousness then. I didn’t feel like a person at all.

 

April 4. Bobby and I are planning to be wonderful! – to improve ourselves. We want to be very thin and silent, but to say unusual things when we speak, and have people hang on our words. We want to wear our hair straight. We want very pale faces, and red lips, and we will dress nicely. We shall be aloof, above the common mass, and cynical, sarcastic, sardonic, satirical, ironic. Delicious words! I would love to have a skin like Lord Byron’s – with a pallor like moonlight – the genius shining through. He fasted. We want to read illuminating books – like Oscar Wilde.

 

    But oh! How we want to be wonderful – and thin. When it gets warmer, I shall go on a four day fast.

 

June 16. School is over – and I have an Incomplete in French, – an incomplete that I will be two months in working off next year. But, hells bells! (a pet expression of Bobbie’s and mine just now) I don’t care! School is over!

 

June 25. Today I went to the Jackson Park [Theatre] and saw Adolph Menjou in “The Social Celebrity.” It was a good picture, but I’m not going to that theatre alone, again. I sat in a row all by myself when the play began, but after a time I became aware of a young man sitting beside me. I thought it rather odd, because if I wanted to sit in a row with only one person in it, I would sit at least a seat away. But I didn’t like to move, so I just sat still. Finally I stole a look at him. He was a nice looking blonde with tortoiseshell glasses. He said to me, “I have never seen this girl on the screen before. What is her name?” I replied as shortly as possible, “I don’t know”… I caught him looking at me, every time I looked away from the screen. Then I became interested in the picture, and forgot all about him until he began crowding over in his seat. I looked down at my lap. His arm was hanging over the seat arm, and his hand was almost touching mine. I moved as far away as I could, but finally his hand did touch mine. I, of course moved mine. I thought it was an accident and I didn’t like to change my seat. But it wasn’t an accident. Every time I looked down and moved my hand he would take his away, and then he would put it back again, but not noticeably. … I was a fool. I didn’t know what to do, and I determined that he shouldn’t drive me from my seat. I was there first! But as soon as I it was over I got up. I saw him waiting in the lobby and I didn’t want to pass him. I thought that there was another exit, but there wasn’t so I finally left quickly and ran to a waiting street car.

 

July 3. I’m so tired of being fat! I’m going back to school weighing 119 pounds – I swear it. Three months in which to lose 30 pounds – but I’ll do it – or die in the attempt.

 

    Yvonne has been told to keep her calories down to 1,200 to 1,500 per day if she hopes to lose weight:

 

July 9. So (after four days) I am going to keep them down to about 50 per day.

 

    And that’s absolutely all, at least till I lose noticabely. No cake or pie or ice-cream or cookies or candy or nuts or fruits or bread or potatoes or meat or anything. If I could only drink tea without cream or sugar. It has no calories.

 

    I have been exercising very little. 100 jumps with the jump rope a day, is all, and I’m scarcely strong enough for that.

 

July 11. I ruined the good work today. I was so weak I could hardly pull myself out of bed. My hands shook terribly and I grew hot and cold by turns. I managed to dress, but when I went downstairs mother said I looked so shaky and pale and sick that she made me eat. And to tell the truth I wasn’t sorry, I had gone 60 hours without food. I ate an immense breakfast – two large peaches, a cup of cocoa with three marshmallows and two pieces of toast. I don’t know what to do. I weighed myself yesterday and I’ve lost 5 pounds – I  weigh 144. But I’ll get thin yet!

 

 July 27. Last week I had an average of less than 140 calories a day and I lost 7 pounds.

 

    If “The Good Fairy” on my desk should take it into her pretty head to grant me three wishes I should need no time in which to make my decision. I would say:

 

Eternel Youth

Genius, and

to be a boy.

 

August 13. [Yvonne is visiting relatives in Cleveland.] Wednesday, Lura came over. She is nineteen, but she looks sixteen, because she is small and thin. She is a fool over boys – anything in pants will do.

 

    Lura wanted me to go to the Bandbox Burlesque with her the next day. It is a cheap and rather vulgar show for a quarter with a comedy and feature motion picture.

 

    I met Lura at 3:30 and we went. The last part of a punk comedy was on when we entered, and I couldn’t see very well. But I lead the way because Lura said she always sat down by boys, and I didn’t want to take any chances. So I sat by an old man and she sat on the aisle. We were almost the only females in there, and all the people looked vulgar. Finally the curtain was raised and the Burlesque began. About 15 girls in very scant, dirty costumes came out and did a little dancing. Then a couple of comedians came out, and “cracked” what Lura calls, “dirty jokes.” One act was terribly coarse and vulgar. And right afterwards they turned on the lights and one of the men said “hello” to Lura and me. I wanted to die – especially after that vile act. It was too awful – that act – I can’t write about it. But the Burlesque was exciting and interesting and I’m awfully glad I went. Lura said afterwards that her boys weren’t there – “There wasn’t much use in my going.” “Why,” I said, “is that why you went? Pay a quarter see a boy?” Sure she laughed, “I’d pay more than that.” Poor perverted Laura.

 

August 23. I have only 7 pounds to go, if I don’t gain. I’ve lost over 20 pounds. Aunt E. and I went to the dime museum but there were just men there. There were pistols and rifles hanging all around, and a great many slot machines where by inserting a penny, nickel or dime, motion pictures could be seen of girls not especially characterized by superfluous clothes.

 

October 3. [Chicago] School! I hate it. It is a seething red-hot hell where tortured souls are crushed beneath despicable work. Underneath the lively chatter, underneath the hundreds of spectacled senior boys and round-eyed bewildered freshmen and laughing slim “popular” girls, underneath the apparently pleasant surface there’s an iron hand that bends the students ruthlessly and molds them in a common pattern.

 

    I hate to go back, I know what I am getting into. I see the winter ahead of me – long hours after school in the depressing – deadly study-hall, grinding or French verbs in the cheerless November afternoons – waiting frozen-footed on the cold, windy train platforms – reading in dull history books about battles I don’t understand – cramming for tests – trying to memorize page after page of scientific fact. Summer is gone! Blue sky – green-lawned. wild, free summer. And tomorrow – school.

 

October 11. Here are ten little things I should like to have, even though they may not all be good –

 

1. Self-possession & control

2. Superiority

3. Cynicism

4. Will power

5. Silentness

6. Differentness

7. Subtlety

8. Immense range of knowledge

9. Supreme indifference

10. Great independence

 

November 4. I wonder if anyone in the world has ever hated himself as I hate myself. It is just recently that I have. Formerly I thought more of myself. I thought I could write, and now that illusion too has been shattered…. I hate myself. I really do. But oh why are my emotions theatrical! … I am a fat, crude, uncouth, misunderstood beast. … I am obscene, earthly. I am a gibbering, blundering stupid creature. … The more intelligent people are, the more miserable they are. I shall be ignorant – and happy.

 

December 31. For exactly a year I’ve written here at frequent intervals. I wonder why? … It has been said that a girls day is never complete until she has told someone about it.

 

    Moi foi! [My faith!] I was a green little fool! I still am. Writing about life and death! I haven’t seen life. Or tasted it. I haven’t even smelled it.

 

 

1927

 

January 8. Some time ago in home economics I told the teacher that I wrote best when I didn’t organize and plan papers. She disagreed, and said that if I did my papers must be very poor. I couldn’t very well say anything but Marjorie C. Stood up for me and said that I wrote good papers, and the matter dropped.

 

    Yesterday, the teacher said that she wished to see me. …

 

    This paper, said the teacher, shows as clearly as possible what happens when you fail to organize. I was silent, so she preceded to tell me what a wretched paper it was. … Apparently she didn’t know that I enjoyed the reputation of being able to write, to a small degree, for she told me that being able to express my thoughts clearly would help me later on. …

 

    Her poor opinion my literary abilities mattered not a twopenny damn to me. But she didn’t stop pestering me there. Her sermon was organized thusly:

 

A.    Discussion of paper

1.     Critisizm

a)      due to lack of organization

b)     due to lack of interest and attention

2.     How to improve papers

a)      organize

b)     take an interest in things

 

B.     Discussion of ME.

1.     Critisizm

2.     How to improve myself (Lord! she can’t tell me anything about that!)

 

    If I am not mistaken B was held in reserve – to be used according to my reaction to A. Or again – observing my reaction to A – it was spontaneous, and that, perhaps, explains why it was not well organized. Personally I doubt if I had a reaction. I just kept silent and tried to practice my subtle sneer. (only it isn’t at all subtle). I must have annoyed her, (I’m really talented at that) for she launched into my personality.

 

January 23. There is only a week more to the semester and work! French! Science! Home Economics! Survey of Art! Biology!

 

    Hell!

 

May 10. I was sixteen yesterday. Sixteen. Birthdays are supposed to make one feel old, but sixteen seems an awfully immature age, while fifteen seems absolutely infantile.

 

(Yvonne went on to the University of Chicago. In her diary, she later wrote: “My God! How different college is from high school! In class one is treated as a human being – the instructors swear like hell, and they’re all atheists. Every damn kid on campus smokes, and so I do, of course, I inhale, and I smoke in public.” In 1936, she met B.F. Skinner, they married in November, and had two daughters.)

 

* 

“Darn. Why can’t we women be treated the same as men?” 

    A second diary from this period introduces us to Martha Lavell, born in Minnesota in 1909. She first left home in 1926, when she enrolled as a freshman at Mills College in California. Here her “Book of Thoughts” began.

 

1926 

September 26. College life is so different from a home life. But we do have loads of fun. Sunday night, while Alice and I were studying, we heard the awfullest noise in the hall and rushed out to investigate. Beryl Pear (since elected Hall pres.) was trying to play a violin, and she didn't know much about it. Another girl had a cello, and a third a tin horn. I joined in with my harmonica and you would have thought someone was being murdered.

 

November 4. Last night was the Hall dance, but several of us couldn’t go since we couldn’t get blind dates. However we formed the Old Maids’ Club and had one grand scandalized meeting about what the young people were coming to. We went up on the hill to have some ice cream and decided it was our duty to reform the boys and girls. Just think, they bobbed their hair (the girls I mean) and wore stockings that could be seen through! Shocking! 

 

1927 

October 3. [Martha is back home.] I certainly did enjoy reading this over the other day. I only wish I’d kept on writing the rest of the college year, for my impressions are recorded so completely that someday they would have been ever so interesting to read. I’ve noticed that there are not many of my thoughts for those four months, and I believe that I began to think only a few months ago. I was discovering myself, I think, in those five last months of school, first my mind and then one day my body. And it was my friendship with Jane Secrest which started the first, I believe. She’s a very introspective person and I was taking Psychology besides; we differed greatly on several subjects and would argue for hours, though we never reached a conclusion. … I think history was one of the things which woke me up. I got some decided views about religion and war and Jane and I discussed them. Our talks weren’t always arguments; often they were ponderings on the whys and wherefores of life. Jane used to say that she wouldn’t mind being a reincarnationist, but I thought it would be dreadful to believe in such a thing. We had been reading some of Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s books which are full of queer ideas, and we had big arguments over them. One was whether a man should always be the wagearner and the woman the homemaker. Then we had innumerable theories on the art of bringing up children. When Jane got going, it was hard to stop. I guess the only thing we never argued over was the existence of such a thing as love. We took it for granted.

 

    So that was what started my mind awakening and its been diligent ever since.

 

    When I think of the kind of books I read in high school, I just groan.

 

December. I’ve been having several arguments with Grammy over religion and it has just astounded me how little she knows how to reason. … I couldn’t believe in her God. All bunk. Grandmother shudders at our disbelief for Mother has about the same ideas as I have and Gin [her sister Ginny] thinks she has too. It worries Grammy a great deal. I think she considers us atheists.

 

    Civilization has been all wrong through all these ages. Of course, it is evolving from something worse to something better all the time, but I sometimes wonder, why did it start out the way it did? Why didn’t men and women live on an equal basis, in the first place? I am glad I’m living in this age; people are beginning to wake up. There was a time when I thought woman suffrage was “insufferable,” and when I was very indignant at seeing a man sitting down in a street car with a woman standing. I’ve changed my mind in the last year. 

 

1928 

Ginny is shocked by the flappers. 

January 8. Ginny gets so worried over the youth of today. She says everyone at school puts on lipstick and rouge and smokes and “pets” and everything. She thinks flappers are terrible. She was horrified at my ideas that the modern youth is better than it ever was. I’m an enthusiastic champion of modern ideas. At last we have reached the conclusion though there will be girls and boys who are coarse enough to smoke, drink and pet, still we can be modern without copying them. She seems to be satisfied with that, though she does refuse to read a story in which a woman smokes.

Flapper style: short hair, and short skirts.
Picture not in blogger's possession.

 

January 18. I’ve been wondering lately if it wouldn’t be possible to make a child perfect with only one ideal or teaching – “Be kind.”

 

March 14. It seems so queer to think that my children will have new ideas quite different from my own. Mine seem the best possible to me now, but I suppose that there will be better ones thirty years from now. And I do hope, Oh how I hope that I will be broad enough to accept them.

 

April 2. I was reading something Dorothy Dix wrote yesterday. … Miss Dix said that a girl should not be a good talker, but a good listener and that she should know just a little less than her husband so that he can feel his superiority. That’s all wrong. How are we going to have absolute quality in this world if men are to feel superior to women?

 

May 4. Sometimes I do think I’m a generation ahead of my time.

 

July 7. I’d give anything if I could wear trousers. It’s perfectly terrible to have to sit with one’s knees together for fear someone might see up, and to be in constant danger of having one’s skirt blow up to one’s waist. Darn. Why can’t we women be treated the same as men? 

 

1929 

February 17. Mr. Bird [psychology professor] has been discussing the possibility of the existence of a fighting instinct. He believes that war and the acceptance of war are founded on a great many more things than a fighting instinct. The attitude toward war is mostly habit, he says. Even if the whole thing is habit, I despair of ever educating man differently.

 

April 13. In reading this over today I noticed that I wrote a year ago about the importance of clothes. I think my attitude has changed. Somehow I sort of hate to wear nice clothes, because there are so many girls who can’t. I feel rather guilty and quite uncomfortable when I wear my blue coat and my lovely fur. My friends’ clothes aren’t half so pretty and I wish mine weren’t. There’s so much injustice in this world. It makes me so sorry.

 

October 22. I wish I knew of something I could do to promote the cause of peace. … The 100 per cent Americanism, the anthem singing, the scorn for all other nations, the flag worship which are being drilled into the coming generation will lead inevitably to another war. 

 

1930 

February 12. Gin needs someone who can guide her over the “rough spots” of her adolescence. She has friends who have some wrong ideas, I think, and I’m so afraid she won’t be able to resist them. She came home today with the statement that she didn’t see why one shouldn’t kiss boys as well as girls. I wasn’t of much help because the only reason I could give was that kisses are sexual (and why have sexual relationships at her age?) but she thought that was silly. She’s influenced too much by what the crowd thinks and of course won’t listen to anything her mother says. … And anyhow, what am I that I should know the right answers to her moral problems? I’m not sure for instance, that one ought not to kiss boys…

 

February 20. One thing which annoys me greatly is the fact that our Child Training class is made up entirely of women. Why is it that men aren’t interested in children? If I ever choose a husband it will be one who’s vitally interested. It is the thing to which I look forward most, I cannot imagine living without children. 

[Martha never does have children.]

 

August 6. Our Health and Disease teacher is a wonderful young woman. I respect and admire her very much. She has been lecturing to us on reproduction and I’ve found there was a great deal I didn’t know. Queer how one is always learning things. My sophomore year in college, after I had discovered the man’s part in procreation, I was very disturbed and surprised to see a statement in my psychology book about the individual being formed by the union of two cells – one from the father and one from the mother. Think of it! A statement like that – right in a book! Then I started majoring in psychology and my professors brought up sex a great deal and discussed its emotions and perversions. Think of it! Right out in a mixed class! Then I came here and started reading a psychoanalysis where the word penis is mentioned on almost every page. Would I ever be able to use the word penis in conversation without embarrassment?

 

September 23. I’ve come to the conclusion that I cannot endure another year with no men companions. … Here I’ve sat for the last six years with my mantle before me, placidly waiting for the prince to arrive. It was a rather a rude jolt to discover that nothing happened, and that the only way to have that prince is to go out and get him. … Here am I, at the age of 21, so self-conscious at the thought of talking with a man that I cannot even feature smiling at 1. Very easy to foresee the result: I’ll turn out an old maid. ...

 

    One of the girls I met this summer I was especially attracted to. I believe maybe it was her liking for introspection and discussion. Yet Janet and I were as far apart as the two poles in experience and in ideals. She had gone with many men and had “necked” with them. And she didn’t believe that it is possible in this age to ever find a man (whom you would care to marry) who hadn’t had intercourse with other women. I don’t want to accept that! And she was willing to marry a man who had kissed other women. Perhaps someday I will have to give up my ideal in regard to that, but oh I don’t want to! 

 

1931 

January 1. Gin Has turned communist and I don’t blame her period I’m not at all sure communism or socialism would work, but I’m willing to give them a chance. Anything is better than an economic system based on greed and disregard of human life.

 

February 9. Mother was here for a week. … How queer it would feel to be her age, to have one’s life behind one as she has and to be living only for one’s children. My imagination doesn’t work that far ahead. I look forward to marriage and children, to companionship with a husband which will last many years.  But after the children are grown and scattered there’s a blank wall. And if one’s husband died, it seems to me the flame of living would go out. Mother has little to look forward to, except the happiness of Gin and me. Wonder if something like that will happen to me. Perhaps I’ll never marry, and go through the years as a lonesome, loveless spinster.

 

October 8. Well, it’s to be Milwaukee this year. I am leaving behind many good times, but I’m going out into the world to seek my fortune, and I have hopes that I will meet with pleasant and broadening experiences. The new life will perhaps be hard to adjust to, but it will be good for me, that’s certain.

 

October 18. I think I’m going to be quite satisfied with my work. The other workers are congenial, and I am greatly attracted to the supervisor, Mrs. Newbold. Have a feeling that I may learn a lot from her. She has poise, and yet she is vivid. She’s one of the few persons I know who are attractive without rouge.

 

December 6. The next thing on the program is some intellectual companionship, particularly masculine, and where am I going to find it? The girls at the office are not exactly my type; their idea of a good time consists of a date with a wise-cracking man and plenty of liquor and cigarettes. 

 

1932 

January 17. It’s funny how I’ve always looked forward to having children of my own. I don’t know when my fancying considering them began, but in high school it was at its height. I thought of my future children as being aged 14, 12, 10, & eight. Their names, their appearance, their personalities, their interests were firmly fixed. Even the color of their bedrooms and their favorite pets entered into my fancies.

 

    It’s a shame for a girl to grow up with ideas and interests like those. For it’s apt to be a difficult adjustment if she has to lead a single life. I have no special abilities in the way of a profession; I don’t really expect to make a good social worker and there’s nothing else I’m fitted for. I don’t know what I’ll do with my life if I don’t marry.

 

October 12. Besides being on the lookout for a job, I’ve joined the Socialist Party. In four weeks I’ve met more people and had more excitement than I ever thought possible.

 

November 9. Recently [Gin] declared that I am her best friend. That certainly pleased me. 

 

1933 

May 30. The condition of the country at this time is certainly puzzling. The papers are full of items proving prosperity is on its way; and Roosevelt has become the people’s idol. It’s hard to tell just what he’s about; quite a bit of liberal legislation has been talked about in the headlines. How far his policies really go is hard to tell.

 

October 8. This book of thoughts is becoming more & more neglected. It isn’t that I haven’t the ideas but I’m always too busy or too indifferent at the moment to write them. Inertia is troubling me this [sic] days, for the same old reason – no male companionship and no vocational success. The Depression hasn’t bothered me half as much as those two. I’ve felt it, I think, only through Mother’s worrying and fretting.

 

(In the waning days of 1936, at age 27, Lavell could still write, “Well, as for the coming year, the only goal in my mind is to find a mate. How and where are the heartbreaking questions. Wish there were matrimonial agencies for such as me. Or at least someone with infinite wisdom to give advice.” She went on to a successful career in social work, but she never did find the prince she had been waiting for.)

Kate Tomibe (alias) age 19

1943 

    In Private Pages, Kate Tomibe, a nineteen year old girl from Seattle, describes life in one of the “War Relocation Centers” where Japanese Americans were sent, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. 

    Penelope Franklin, the editor, describes the camps: 

    Housing was in standard army barracks, hastily erected. Each family was given a 20 x 25 foot room with army cots as the only furniture. Bathroom facilities were communal and primitive; meals were served in army-type mess halls.

 

    Tule Lake, California, where Kate Tomibe and her family lived, had been built on the sandy bed of a dried-up lake. Summer dust storms were menacing, and winters were extremely cold. Lack of drainage caused seas of mud during wet seasons.

 

    The Tomibe family was from the Seattle, Washington area. Kate was 19; with her were her parents, brother Sam, 16, sister Beth, 14, and brother Ray, seven.

 

    Franklin picks up the diary edit when Kate gets the idea to write in greater detail, after a friend tells her that her entries, to that point, are “too impersonal and not detailed enough. 

January 24. Mother made me take my kid sister with me, so I went with her and two other girls in our block [a block of barracks] to the morning service. There was the regular singing of hymns…

 

    It was decided that Sunday breakfasts would be eaten at home in our block. This is a good idea because you don’t have to get up as early and can cook the meal more deliciously, although handicapped by the lack of facilities formerly available back home. Sad case, on New Year’s Day when we had to cook all our meals at home [that is, in their camp home], our soup was cooked in an empty tomato can. However, the breakfast menu isn’t very large so it doesn’t matter.

       …  

    N., a boy from Tacoma, was also [there] looking as suave as ever. It seems so silly now when I think of the crush I had on him long ago. It only lasted several days so it wasn’t too serious. He can go jump in the lake for all I care after the dirty deal he gave C. – going steady with her and monopolizing her time for a week then suddenly walking out on her without any explanation. The only reason I can see for his desertion is that he didn’t want to go to the dance with her every time. Then he goes necking with any girl that is dumb enough to give him the slightest encouragement.

 

January 25. Getting up in the morning is the worst of my trials and tribulations. Last night it was so hot I couldn’t sleep very well. The stove is about six feet from my bed and when Dad puts too much coal in at night it gets too warm. … I like to lie in bed in the morning and meditate because that is about the only time I have to do that. The mess gong and my parents don’t give me much time to do that though. I would like to hear a bugle blowing reveille instead of a noisy gong. I have a good notion to get a bugle and blow it myself if some Boy Scout doesn’t beat me to it. When I finally dragged myself out of bed, hastily dressed, washed and ran into the mess hall what did we have for breakfast but pancakes! “Sells like pancakes,” sounds like a farce here. I never did like pancakes too well, but I just can’t stand them anymore; they choke and nauseate me. I wish [I] could have a nice fluffy waffle though.

 

January 26. There have been times when I have yearned for dates with certain people, and there have also been other times when I have had to run around in circles trying to avoid dates with certain other people.

 

January 27. After I came back to the office [she is working for the Recreation Department in the camp] we went over the budget for 1943. The music department said that it was necessary to get about $200 worth of music books, in addition to various other musical supplies. They got about $160 worth of piano instruction and music textbooks in 1942, and P. thought they were demanding too much. There seemed to be some friction so I kept quiet, but I think that some people really demand too much. They are of the opinion that the government put them in here against their will, so now they’ll try to get as much as they can out of the government. As far as the basic needs, such as food, shelter, clothing, medical care are concerned the people should make certain demands, but they shouldn’t expect too much in the way of luxuries. …

 

    As U. says, if the people have too many things done for them, they’ll lose the power to do it themselves and really become wards of the government as the Indians are.

 

    This morning I suddenly got the idea that I must have my typewriter which I left home along with many other things I should have brought. I told Mother that I was going to write to the man who was taking care of our place and have him send it. She said that if I were going to get my typewriter, she wants her trunk too because it contains many of her precious keepsakes.

 

January 28. What I need is another love affair. Not any more adolescent infatuations or physical attractions but a beautiful romance which is lasting and based on understanding and companionship. I want somebody to love and understand me, somebody that I can respect and love. Nobody understands me completely, not even my own family.

 

January 30. The other day I stopped in at the canteen and got some nail polish, shade young red. I have never used such bright nail polish before, but when I’m working outside I have to be a moderate so I might as well use it while I’m here. However, after I got it on it looked a little too flashy, and my parents didn’t like it. I don’t know why I got it, and I hate to think of having to use up the whole bottle. But perhaps there is something to that “red badge of courage.” Some man said that the reason a woman wears lipstick is that when she is down and out, when she has just lost a job, or is disgraced, the flashy lipstick serves as a symbol of courage. If that is true of lipstick, the same should also hold for nail polish.

 

    Yesterday I did my two week’s washing after lunch, and today after lunch I was doing my ironing which had been accumulating for over a month. When I had it about half done N. came, so I went to the Little Theater with her. When and if I ever get married I faithfully promise to devote my time to domestic work, but while I’m single I might as well enjoy my life as much as possible, and there simply isn’t enough time to keep up with the housework.

 

February 1. V. and G. got word that they had received their leave clearance, and they were thrilled and excited. V. Is going to Columbia University in New York, and G. says he is going to either Michigan or Maine.

 

    My parents still won’t let me go out [of the camp], but I’m not in too much of a hurry. I am very particular and opportunities seem quite scarce.

 

February 3. I got up before seven this morning, the first time that has occurred in months. Regardless of whether I wanted to or not, I had to because Dad practically yanked me out of bed. Miraculously, we had fried eggs for breakfast. I had almost forgotten what an egg tastes like, and bacon is a thing of the past along with some other commodities.

 

Kate is reading “Psychology of Women,” a lecture by Freud. “Freud,” she grumbles, “thinks that all women feel inferior to men, but I don’t…” 

February 4. This water is really getting me down. In fact I’m developing hypochondria. It’s nothing like the beautiful waters of Lake Washington or Puget Sound where we used to go swimming. I’m getting so homesick for a lovely sunset on the sound; These dirty puddles are nothing but a menace to society.

 

    For many years I have wanted two things, time and money, along with some other things. I still want time, but as long as we have to stay here money hasn’t much value to me. About all you can buy besides the bare necessities or extra clothes and perhaps equipment.

 

    Food in the mess hall has curbed Kate’s interest in food. “Now, when the mess gong rings it’s just a nuisance. It’s just too much of the wrong kind of food, such as two big pancakes in the morning or a big plateful of beans at noon.” 

February 5. More people left today four points east. The moment when the leave permit arrives is a happy one, a climax to months of waiting, but the moment of departure must be one of joy, sadness, and anxiety combined, the dawn of a new day. I don’t think I’ll be going out for a long time yet. …

 

    It sounds funny, but until a little over a year ago I didn’t even know how babies were born or what intercourse meant. When I asked mother about these things, she always said, “You’ll find out when you grow older.” I finally had to get it out of my teacher. I had heard about unmarried mothers and wondered what they did to get that way. For some reason or other sex has always been considered taboo…Miss S. and I were talking about it one night, and I naively asked her if a woman would get a baby if she married a man and ate with him and slept with him. She said that they’d have to go through intercourse. She couldn’t very well explain what that meant in ABC language, but I got a general idea of what it meant. When I was 16, I tried to read Havelock Ellis’ Psychology of Sex but couldn’t get ahead nor tails out of it. Recently I have read a textbook on marriage and understand most of the things concerned, although I still don’t understand the principles of birth control or the strong sexual urge.

 

    When I was in high school I was still naive enough to believe that there was no such thing as racial prejudice although I had been hearing about it. … After I graduated I went through eight weeks of summer school to take a post-graduate course in geometry and bookkeeping. Then came time to look for a job. I could have gone to college like everybody else did, but I didn’t want to struggle my way through financially nor ask my parents for a subsidy, so I pounded the pavement day after day. This was the reality from which I had been sheltered all these years. Some bank presidents and executives were frank enough to tell me the truth about racial prejudice. To others who were hesitant I asked bluntly, “Are you racially prejudiced?” They didn’t want to admit it and hemmed and hawed without being able to give a satisfactory explanation. I didn’t want to be a quitter so I continued and finally got an office job in the Seattle public schools. I was only 17 at the time and just out of high school, so it wasn’t too bad as a beginning. About six months later the war had broken out and people were beginning to get hysterical. There were several other Nisei girls working in schools, and some busy body women who said they were PTA members were passing around a petition to have us dismissed because our loyalty was in doubt.

 

    Former classmates of mine, some of whom were on the borderline of graduating, are now working at shipyards and defense plants while here I am stuck in this place. Many brilliant college graduates are also here while their dollar classmates are earning hundreds of dollars outside.

 

    Last year a Mrs. B. wrote an article in the Sacramento Bee complaining that teachers shouldn’t be paid $200 a month to teach evacuees in relocation centers music and other fine arts, so I wrote to the Bee saying that evacuee teachers who have professional standing are only getting $16 a month and that in a community of 15,000 people education and recreation were a necessity; although handicapped by lack of facilities and equipment, we were doing the best we could. Then two anonymous housewives viciously attacked me, telling me to write Hirohito and ask him what kind of treatment the Japanese were giving American prisoners, and stating that with “limited facilities and equipment” the Americans had fought courageously at Corregidor and Bataan. As it happens almost every other day, another woman wrote an article in the Bee protesting the fact that Japanese were permitted to go to colleges while American boys had to join the army.

 

February 7. The snow was about a foot deep this morning…In my younger days snow would have made me very happy, but now I don’t care for it so much because the after effects of mud and slush are too much.

 

    In spite of the weather there was a surprising number at church. I wonder why some of these people go to church. I don’t think it’s to show off their clothes because that’s silly. They don’t look serious enough to go for the purpose of remission of sins. The purpose of meeting people seems the most logical. Why do I go to church? Of course, mother makes me go, but it’s not just because she says so that I do it. The matter of clothes is out because I certainly don’t dress up to go to church, and if I had to, I wouldn’t want to. I love to dress up in pumps, fur coat, gloves, hat, etc. on the right occasion, but the right occasion never occurs in here.

 

February 8. I. and some other boys asked me what I thought about cheek-to-cheek dancing. I told him that if necessary, it might be all right with their one and only but promiscuous if made a habit with every girl. They said that with certain girls it was unavoidable.

 

February 10. After I got home [from work] I was reading the rules for selective service. One part says, “We want to give you the opportunity to serve your country along with other Americans. We are sure you wouldn’t want to be treated differently.” Is this a farce? What irony! Less than a year ago they were saying, “Everyone of Japanese ancestry clear out within a week.”

 

    The next day, when Kate went to the office, she discovered that “some boys were celebrating kigensetsu [Empire Day]. I used to know that this was a Japanese holiday but it’s hard to keep up with those things now.” 

    Whether they were celebrating in ironic fashion, or whether their treatment in being sent to camps had darkened their feelings for this country, is not clear. We do know from what Kate says, that feelings ran the gamut. 

    In the evening some of the young men got together and suddenly decided to call a block meeting to discuss the selective service questionnaire. L. was sitting next to me so I asked him what he thought. L. is 23 years old and in Japan 19 years and even attended college there. He said that as an American citizen he would do everything for the United States but expected to be treated like a citizen. He said that it was our duty to fight against all enemies. I asked him if he would join the army and fight against Japan, and he immediately replied “Of course.”

 

…

 

    G.Y., block manager, and D.G., councilman, thought that there should be no question about answering “yes” to the 28th question which goes something like, “Do you swear allegiance to the United States government and forswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor and any other foreign organization or power?” To the 27th question which asks “Are you willing to do active combat duty and fight at any assigned place?” They thought it could be answered “no” or with a conditional yes. The conditions would be that Nisei soldiers be allowed to enter any restricted area without any red tape; other Nisei would be treated like ordinary American citizens; and our parents be accorded the same privileges as German and Italian aliens. Of course this would not apply to those who are planning to go back to Japan. Such persons should answer no to both questions.

 

February 16. In the evening there was a block meeting. I went in there late and as Mr. O. was making an announcement I didn’t want to walk across to the other end of the room. M. and N. and some other boys were sitting on the service counter so I sat there with them. Dad made me get off and later told me that it’s alright for boys to sit on the table but girls shouldn’t do it. Gee, I get tired of hearing that boys can do a certain thing but girls can’t.

 

    On February 21, instead of a sermon in church, five speakers discussed the question of loyalty to the U.S. One man, who had come to the U.S. at age four, said if he were a citizen he would be loyal, but would not register for the draft. Mrs. O. urged everyone to register. She suggested that any “zoot-suited, jitterbugging Nisei” who returned to Japan would have trouble adjusting. One high school teacher suggested that each individual follow his “own conscience and not follow the herd like sheep.” A young man said he would answer yes to Question 28, and “gave as his reason…the kindness of American friends and reminiscences of the typical American life he had led.”   

    There was hot feeling against, as well. Tomibe explains, 

    Beth came home around five and said there was a big riot in block 42. After a block meeting some of the boys put on anti-registration demonstrations and shouted “tenno heika Panzai” [“Long live the emperor”]. The soldiers had to come and after using teargas had carried off some thirty boys to jail.

 

February 24. Today was a gloomy and desolate day and so I stayed home in the afternoon and read Freud’s theory on dreams. He thinks that most dreams are wish fulfillment and are of sexual nature. The only dream that I can remember clearly is the one I had about the devil when I was about three years old. When I was small, Mother used to discipline me with the devil will get you if you don’t watch out stuff so I dreamt that we were on a picnic and a red oni [devil] came along and dragged me off to Hades where there were devils of other colors. 

…

 

    There was another block meeting. A request was made for a representative to attend the kibei meeting, but nobody wanted to go. We thought that it would be fun to see what it was like so I tagged along with the kibeis.

 

    The place was packed, mostly with kibei. The air was full of smoke and reminded me of a bar room minus the drinks. Everybody was more or less excited, and one man got up and said in a half crying voice, “Some people can’t make future plans because they don’t know which side will win the war but I’m sure that Japan will win.” Somebody else shouted “Japan will never lose!”

 

February 27. Dad says that his heart is definitely in Japan, and if it came to the point of choosing between Japan and me he would choose Japan. Well, I’m not going to worry about anything like that until I get to it. I might even be willing to go to Japan for awhile and see how it is.

 

    There simply isn’t any privacy here. I was getting undressed to take a shower when Mr. P. knocks on the door and comes in. They finally installed the Japanese bath and our shower room but now that the weather is getting warmer it won’t do much good. Seems so unsanitary for everyone to use the same water. The rules are that the people are supposed to take a shower and clean themselves before going in the bath, and they can’t take their towels or washcloths in there. I didn’t think anything of going in the swimming pool even with Negroes but bath is a different matter.

 

March 3. The recruiter for the WAAC is here today and tomorrow. If I could meet the minimum requirement I might enlist if it weren’t for my parents. Driving a Jeep over foreign terrain sounds very thrilling.

 

March 18. In the evening I went to hear misses. F. G.’s speech on preparation for marriage. She listed 10 points to look for in the prospective partner: closest to ideal, sterling character, confidence, ability to live together, no clashing of tastes, health, skills, worthy to be a parent, brings out the best in yourself, mutual interests. [Later that day, Kate’s mother went to hear the same woman lecture on “Sex and Youth Problems.”]

 

    I listened to “Town Meeting of the Air” as I do every Thursday evening, and the topic of discussion today was on the subjects to be taught in the schools in war time. The question was whether to discontinue liberal arts and replace it with military training. Most of them thought that liberal arts had its place but war came first.

 

    Franklin notes that the War Relocation Agency’s “official policy was to encourage people to leave the camps, and qualified U.S. citizens had been granted leave clearance as early as July 1942.” By the end of 1944, 35,000 people had left the camps. Meanwhile, Tule Lake was turned into a maximum security facility, where so-called “disloyals” from many other camps were kept locked up together. 

    Nothing further, the editor says, is known about what happened to the diarist after the war ended.