II. Income: husband and wife will continue to maintain separate bank accounts.a. Elizabeth Steed will retain sole responsibility for managing the estate inherited from her parents and her first husband.
b. Samson Garner will retain sole possession of all income received for his services to Daltex Steel Company and from investments current and future.
III. Household expenses:a. Elizabeth Steed will assume responsibility for all expenses of running a home, including utilities, insurance, food, and household staff.
b. Samson Garner will pay Elizabeth Steed a monthly sum roughly equivalent to one-fourth of the above costs.
IV. Furnishings:a. House will be furnished from family possessions now owned by both parties. Any additional furniture deemed necessary will be selected and paid for by Elizabeth Steed—and remain her permanent property.
b. Any furniture specifically requested by Samson Garner will be acquired at his own expense and considered his property.
V. Automobiles: each party shall retain title to and assume financial responsibility for his/her own automobile—including costs of insurance, maintenance, and fuel—and shall replace it at his/her own discretion.
VI. Life insurance: both parties will carry a life insurance policy of equal value, naming the other as beneficiary; however the value of any additional policies naming other beneficiaries (i.e., the children of Elizabeth Steed) will be left to the discretion of the policyholder.
VII. Dependents: Elizabeth Steed will assume full financial responsibility for the needs of her two children, including clothing, medical costs, education, and social obligations. In the event of her death, these needs will become the responsibility of Samson Garner.
June 10, 1922
Honey Grove
Dear Totsie,
The architect has submitted his final set of plans and we have approved them, with perhaps more enthusiasm from me than from Sam. At least on the surface we are in agreement, however, and work is scheduled to begin immediately.
With the plans approved, I capitulated completely to Sam’s insistence that we set a date for the wedding. He suggested tomorrow but I persuaded him to wait till July 4th, which will give us the long holiday weekend for a honeymoon. Besides, the idea of getting married on Independence Day appeals to my sense of irony. I am not sure where we will live until the house is ready, but I rather like having a few unanswered questions in my future.
I am glad you approve of the marriage contract. I showed it to Sam today on our way downtown to apply for our license. He read it without a word, signed it, then handed it back to me and said in a voice so devoid of emotion it sounded as if it had been recorded on another planet, “I never want to see that damn thing again as long as I live.”
I must admit I was caught off-guard by the one question you raised. I did not realize how completely the contract ignored the possibility of offspring resulting from this union—perhaps because it is a possibility I have never contemplated and Sam has never mentioned. My reproductive processes have been in such a state of rebellion since Robin’s death I doubt if I could conceive now even if I had the desire—which I do not.
I love my children at the age they are now, and I have neither the energy nor the patience to shepherd a new one to this level of perception and response. And neither does Sam, though he may not realize it. Nor, frankly, would I risk his affection for my children by presenting him with one of his own. This is not a matter we have discussed, and I trust Sam will never put me in the position of opposing him outright. However, no matter how equally a man contributes to a child’s conception, it is the woman who is left to bear and often to raise it alone. So the decision must finally belong to her.
Darling Totsie, how happy I am you will be standing at my side to give me courage as I commit the rest of my life to yet another man.
Je t’embrasse,
Bess
June 28, 1922
Honey Grove
Dear Lydia and Manning,
Sam and I are to be married next Friday evening in Dallas, and we hope the two of you can be there—and of course Mother Steed and Marian if they care to come.
Grace and Frank Townsend—the friends who introduced us—have graciously offered to have the wedding in their home, followed by a champagne supper. It will be a very intimate affair. So far I have only invited you, Mavis, Exa and Martin Banks, Totsie and Arthur Fineman, and Sam has asked a few associates from the office.
Of course I will not be mailing engraved wedding invitations, but I am sending announcements to all our friends. None of the usual wording seems quite appropriate since my parents are dead and this is a second marriage for each of us. So I have decided to compose my own announcement. A draft is enclosed. Please give me your candid appraisal—from the point of view of social acceptance as well as literary style. I will not place my order with the printer until I have your approval, so do let me hear from you right away.
My love,
Bess
Enc.
Elizabeth Alcott Steed
daughter of
Andrew and Abigail Alcott
of Honey Grove
widow of
Robert Randolph Steed
of Dallas and St. Louis
mother of
Eleanor Elizabeth and Andrew Alcott Steed
is pleased to announce
that she has joined her life in marriage
to Samson Arlington Garner
of Philadelphia and Dallas
on the Fourth of July
nineteen hundred and twenty-two
in Dallas, Texas
July 3, 1922
Dallas, Texas
Dear Mother Steed,
Lydia and Manning arrived this afternoon with Marian. We are all staying at the home of my friends Totsie and Arthur Fineman, and it is quite a gala house party. Totsie graciously offered to keep the children this weekend while Sam and I are away on our honeymoon, and I do not know who accepted her offer more eagerly—Sam and I or Drew and Eleanor.
She and Arthur have been so kind and generous to us from the day we announced our engagement. They are hosting the rehearsal dinner tonight, taking care of the children after the wedding, and then—most thoughtful of all—giving us their house for a month while they vacation in Colorado. I think they more than any of our other friends understand the mixed feelings that accompany a second marriage, and they are doing everything they can to make it easier for both of us.
I was very sad when Manning and Lydia arrived today without you, and I trust that even though we will not have your presence at our wedding tomorrow we will have your blessing. No one loved Rob as I did or mourned his passing more—not even you—so no one has the right to judge me for committing what is left of my life to another man. No one would rejoice more than Rob to see how happy his children are in the presence of the man who is about to become my husband, and if you love your grandchildren as much as you say you do, then you will rejoice with us tomorrow—even though you have chosen to do it alone.
Affectionately, as always,
Bess
July 8, 1922
Dallas
Dear Mavis,
I was so glad you could come for the wedding. Somehow, looking at you, I could almost see Papa standing beside you giving me his blessing. The reverses of fate are difficult to accept and I still find it unbelievable that I am with a husband when you are without one.
Sam and I had a lovely weekend in Galveston. He had never been there before and I had only seen the city in transit so it was an adventure for us both. Galveston shares with all seaports an air of mystery and excitement and even though it is located in Texas, it seems closer in spirit to Naples than to Dallas. I could never look at the Gulf of Mexico without imagining that Jean Laffite and his pirates were anchored out there somewhere.
We played tennis every morning before breakfast. Sam is determined to improve my backhand, though I am not sure it can be done. In return for my sincere effort to master a s
port for which I clearly have no aptitude, he has agreed to submit to my tutelage in the fine arts. At this point the only place our interests meet is at the movies. Sam has always been interested in photography and he is fascinated by motion pictures from a purely technical point of view. As for me, I become so absorbed watching John Barrymore as “Beau Brummel” and Rudolph Valentino as “Monsieur Beaucaire,” I completely forget a camera is involved.
We were away only three days, but they were spent in such leisure the trip seemed much longer. Time has a different meaning in an unfamiliar setting. Each new experience seems to stretch an hour to several times its normal capacity. If I were told I had only a short time to live, I would spend the weeks left to me traveling, making each hour hold as many new sights and sounds as possible. And how much easier to leave loved ones behind when adventure is ahead. I would like to believe that the soul sets out on a journey of its own long before the body ceases to breathe so that by the time those left behind begin to mourn, our traveler has already embarked in another country.
How strangely the mind works! I started this letter by describing my honeymoon and I end it by discussing death.
Much love,
Bess
July 22, 1922
Dallas
Dear Dwight,
What an extraordinary wedding present!
When I opened the box and saw the beautiful leather-bound book, I assumed it was some rare edition and wondered why there was no title imprinted on the binding. Then I opened it and saw the exquisite vellum pages—all blank except for your inscription. Who else but you would know the excitement I would feel on being presented with a book of blank pages? Our thoughts are among the few things we can leave behind us in permanent form and I am anxious to begin writing—though somewhat awed at the thought of opening that handsome volume and seeing my own efforts enshrined.
Why is it never enough for me just to live my life? From the time I was a child and started my first scrapbook, I have always looked upon my own experience with the eye of an artist trying to shape it into something more interesting than it was. My scrapbooks are filled with newspaper clippings about other people, some of whom I barely knew, as if their activities could somehow extend the boundaries of my own experience or perhaps, less than satisfied with my own achievements, I hoped to share vicariously in theirs.
Sometimes I think it is that same frustration with life as it is lived day by day that compels me to write such long letters to people who seldom reply in kind, if indeed they reply at all. Somehow by compressing and editing the events of my life, I infuse them with a dramatic intensity totally lacking at the time, but oddly enough I find that years later what I remember is not the event as I lived it but as I described it in a letter. I find the very act of writing turns fact into fiction and for that I thank God with all of my heart. And I thank you for the book that will preserve my life in the form I impose upon it. It occurs to me we are all capable of adding another dimension to our daily lives if we would but look upon the people around us as characters in a drama devised for our amusement. There is no life too dull to be transformed into art by a lively imagination. Even Rumpelstiltskin began with straw.
I am anxious for you to meet my new husband, but who knows when we will travel east again. He is appalled that I have crossed the Alps but never seen the Rockies, and is planning road trips across the western United States that should keep us busy for several summers. In the meantime I am subscribing to The New York Times so at least I can be with you in spirit.
With abiding affection,
Bess
September 5, 1925
Dallas
Dear Lydia,
Promise you will destroy this letter after you read it.
This morning I looked in the mirror and saw a woman Rob would not recognize. The slender, high-spirited girl he married is as dead as her handsome and adoring first husband.
In the three years since I married Sam, I have gained thirty pounds. Dear Sam ... I must not blame him—at least not entirely—for what I have become. He is still the same man—weight included—that he was on our wedding day. In fact, he seems to thrive on the domestic routine that marriage enforces on unsuspecting individuals.
My first marriage survived many storms—from within and without—but no turbulence can compare to the agony of being becalmed, with no wind in sight. Like the Ancient Mariner, I inhabit “a painted ship upon a painted sea.”
Marriage to your brother did nothing to prepare me for life with Sam. Rob and I had our battles in the beginning, but I was more in love with him when he died than on our wedding day. Poor Sam! How can he compete with a memory that is not only perfect in itself but allows me to exist in perfect freedom?
The camping trips Sam plans each summer are my only escape from a daily existence that grows more oppressive each year. We returned from New Mexico yesterday and have no plans to leave home again until next summer, when Sam hopes to explore Utah. After shepherding the children and me west for three years, he is finally beginning to feel we qualify for American citizenship.
Last year I added a screened-in sleeping porch to the house —at my own expense—so that Sam could recapture the sensation of camping outdoors and I could remain in the bedroom, reading as late as I liked. Sam loves the breeze but expects me to fall asleep at his side. And not at the hour of my choosing but when he is ready to retire—on the dot of ten every night of his life. If I ask to leave on my light and read, he does not forbid it but laments that he cannot fall asleep for the sound of the moths flailing their wings against the screen in a futile effort to reach the light.
Last night I lay beside him staring into the dark till he fell asleep, then crept stealthily back into the bedroom and read till dawn. Unfortunately I succumbed to sleep with the book still in my lap so my absence from his bed did not go unnoticed. Though he did not dare confront me directly, he took particular pleasure in summoning me to a breakfast I was in no mood to enjoy after only two hours of sleep.
The children start school next week, but I am not sure they are being properly challenged here and am considering sending Andrew East next year. His manners would profit as much as his mind. Naturally he is adamantly opposed to the idea, even though I have had a place reserved for him at Choate since he was a child. Like most of our friends, he believes the best of everything can be found right here at home. The more he argues, the more he convinces me I am right in wanting to broaden his outlook.
Though Sam objects in principle to a prep-school education, I do not think he would mind having the other male voice at the dinner table silenced and moved a polite distance away. Friction between father and son is to be expected, I suppose, but the tensions are exacerbated when the father is as new to his role as Sam. There are nights, after an especially vocal dinner, when I wonder whatever made me think it was best for the children if I married again. Or—dare I say it?—for me.
Now destroy this letter, dearest Lydia, and dismiss its contents from your mind, as I must do if I am to continue living within the bonds of holy wedlock.
I love you as Rob’s sister
—and mine,
Bess
April 5, 1926
Dallas
Dear Dwight,
Andrew was notified by letter today that he has been accepted at Choate for the fall semester. I have never seen him so excited. Thank you for all your efforts in his behalf.
He is quite conscious of the fact that he is about to embark on a journey that no one in his family—or indeed no one he knows here—has ever made before him, and the thought fills him with pride, along with barely concealed apprehension. It is just as much of an accomplishment for a young man from this part of the country to travel eastward, back to the tradition-bound institutions of his ancestors, as it was for the pioneers to travel westward into uncharted territory. To be sure he will not face physical obstacles, but the intellectual challenges ahead of him are equally formidable.
As much as I would like
to accompany him when he boards the train in September, I know I must stay behind. However, I am already looking forward to visiting him later in the year and then spending some time in New York. A dispassionate observer might even question my motives for sending my child away to school, seeing what an unassailable excuse it provides for frequent trips to my favorite city.
I have a feeling it is going to be a glorious fall. I can hardly wait.
A bientôt,
Bess
June 28, 1926
Dallas
Dear Lydia and Manning,
We are celebrating several separate occasions Saturday with a family picnic for all our friends, and I hope you can join us. Come for the weekend if you can and of course bring Marian and Mother Steed with you.
Sam and I will be observing our fourth wedding anniversary and concurrently, as usual, our country’s independence. We will also be celebrating an eminent arrival and a departure. Our first neighbors, the newspaper editor, Harold D. Perkins, and his wife, will begin building a house on their lot next fall, at the same time Andrew will be leaving for Choate.
I am sure you will find it to your advantage to get to know a man of such widespread influence as our new neighbor. I have been looking forward to his prospective proximity from the day we bought our lot and have been disappointed by his continued delay in starting construction. I had the impression when we began building that he and his wife would soon be following our example, but the more I saw of them, the less definite their plans seemed to become.
When I called to invite him to the party, he first declined, saying he had houseguests. Then I explained the party was partly in his honor, to welcome him to the neighborhood, and the invitation of course included his guests. He hesitantly agreed to make a brief appearance at the party, reluctant, I am sure, to impose unduly on my hospitality. He confessed that he had never been inside the homes of any of his present neighbors and had come to depend on the privacy this lack of intimacy afforded. I assured him I agreed completely in principle, the only exception being a case where individuals share enough common interests to be friends at any distance. I also made the point that there was no reason why our friendship could not profit from our proximity—as long as it was not based on it.