OH WHAT A WEB WE WEAVE

 

ABORTION IN THE TIME OF NORA MAY FRENCH : AMERICA AT THE EARLY 20th CENTURY

CRIME READS - NORA MAY FRENCH - GILDED EDGE   

This essay, entitled 'Reclaiming the Legacy of Nora May French, the Pioneering Poet Made Into A Femme Fatale By Mediocre Men and California Mythology, is by Catherine Prendergast, author of 'The Gilded Edge."

Nora's second abortion was by pill bought over the counter. Her boyfriend was the married Harry Lafler (Henry Anderson Lafler). She wrote him a letter as the abortion pill began to take effect. 

Excerpt : Her parcel of pills still unopened, Nora sat in the kitchen and read the letter from Harry. It was everything she had hoped it would be, sweet and passionate. She felt her will, so resolute earlier that evening, begin to falter. She tried to imagine a life with Harry and a child: Harry, walking their unfinished floor at 3:00 a.m., rocking their baby to sleep in his arms as she dozed. A beautiful baby perhaps with Harry’s dark wavy hair but her own spooky eyes. She and Harry could be like Dante and Elizabeth Rossetti, living for beauty and art, while their child rambled happily around the house.

It didn’t take long for this fantasy to collapse. Harry Lafler was still a married man, and despite his promises, Nora did not believe his separation from his wife would ever progress to divorce. In truth, she wasn’t even sure if she wanted it to. She and Harry were bound by passion and recklessness, not responsibility and reality. She was his carefree muse, something ethereal and magical, not an ordinary woman who could get in ordinary trouble. He would recoil from the sight of a swollen belly and bolt from the rigors of fatherhood. She would be left raising a baby on her own—a complete disaster. Even if in 1907 women worked outside the home, rode bicycles, and published poetry, nobody looked favorably on an unwed mother and her bastard. Her child would be seen not as the product of love but rather as the punishment for sin.

ABORTION and the BOHEMIANS

 Did turn of the century men expect women to "get rid of it quietly?"

Nora May French was unmarried and twenty-six when she commit suicide. She had some expectation that she would marry but, if she was in an engagement it was ended shortly before. She had two known abortions by that time.  I thought this video was on topic and would be of interest to my readers. - Missy 

READING THE POETRY OF NORA MAY FRENCH on PROJECT GUTENBERG

 Here's the link! PROJECT GUTENBERG : POETRY OF NORA MAY FRENCH

FROM forest paths we turned us, nymphs, new-made,

And, lifting eyes abashed with great desire

Before high Jove, the gift of souls we prayed.

Whereat he said: “O perfect as new leaves

New glossed and veined with blood of perfect days

And stirred to murmured speech in fragrant eves,

“Still ask ye souls? Behold, I give instead

Into each breast a bird with fettered wings,

A bird fast holden with a silken thread: ........

( read the whole poem at the link!)

OBSERVATION

 

NORA MAY FRENCH : THE SPINSTER POET IN CALIFORNIA : RETIRED BRITISH ARMY CAPTAIN HILEY AND NORA HAVE AN AFFAIR AND SHE BECOMES PREGNANT

Excerpt page 57: (After Nora called off her engagement in 1904)

At the age of twenty-three, Nora embraced spinsterhood with enthusiasm. Freedom from marriage was freedom to live one's own life. She would devote herself to her writing. No more light ditties like the "Ode on Aunt E.'s Bloomer Bathing Costume," which had made Helen (her sister) laugh for hours. No more stories to distract the readers of the Sunday Los Angeles Times. She would focus only on poetry and set goals to challenge herself. That year she published four poems in Lummis's journal but decided to shoot for journals with more national reach. In March, her poem "In Empty Courts" appeared in The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness. A new publication out of New York, The Smart Set's circulation had shot up to well over one hundred thousand in four short years buy printing national names like Jack London.

About a man's inconsistent attention, in "Empty Courts" has been inspired buy a muse of sorts who had recently entered her life. Captain Alan Hiley had two main qualities that recommended him. He was already married, and he lived far away, in Santa Cruz. A tall, handsome timber magnate and retired British Army captain, Hiley considered himself an established author who had published his memoir of distinguished service in the War. They had met at a poetry ready (Hileys wife was also a poet( and started an on-and-off affair.

On the weekends, Hiley sailed down the coast on a yacht to take Nora to dinner in fine restaurants.  He asked her about poetry though she noticed he rarely listened to her answers....

Nora decided that she could not give in to Hiley's charms and fought her attraction to him.

Excerpt page 59: (As Nora became pregnant)

They debated too long what to do. He would leave his wife. Of course he would. Then, no, a divorce would take too long and be too public. In her distress, she made the dreadful mistake of telling Helen everything. Helen, scandalized, was even more distraught than Nora. She must get Hiley to marry her, Helen counseled, or the whole family would be ruined.

But marriage was not in the cards. Instead, the eminently respectable Captain Alan Richard Hiley secured a doctor and money enough to pay him. What at first had seemed to Nora like a vexing process - coming to the decision, finding the willing physician - turned out to be the easy part compared to what came next. She experienced the procedure itself as a surreal horror, the doctor's cold, pointed, metal tolls contrasting with the soft warm of her flesh mingled with that of the fetus. Only partially sedated during it all, she glanced down and saw the aftermath.

This was Nora's first known abortion and, because she did not take the pills or potions advertised, I have this feeling she might have been further along in the pregnancy than a woman could consider to be "delayed menses." Additionally, it seems to me that, after such a horror, a woman would seek to use contraception. Maybe she did. And it failed.

Excerpt page 80 : (The aftermath of the abortion)

She couldn't exactly say when Harry Lafler became so much a part of her emotional life. Right after her mother died in July, she had sent a poem to The Argonaut, where Harry was serving as editor. He accepted her poem, and their correspondence quickly became romantic. They fell in love through words.

How perfect, she thought, that the body was not there to intervene. Since the abortion she had a nickname for herself : the "Hands Off" girl. Except for a date here and there, she kept men at arm's length - especially Alan Hiley, who in an irritating reversal now wanted to marry her...

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All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

POETRY READING: TWO POEMS BY NORA MAY FRENCH

BOHEMIAN POET NORA MAY FRENCH : AN EARLY 20th CENTURY LOVE GONE WRONG STORY OF MONTEREY CALIFORNIA : THE CYANIDE LOVE TRIANGLE

NORA MAY FRENCH

 1881-1907

photo from Wikipedia

identified as Nora May French as photographed by Arnold Genthe

The Gilded Edge by Catherine Prendergast is a primary reference for this month's posts.

Was it actually a LOVE TRIANGLE? 

I think the subtitle of 'The Gilded Edge' which is 'Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America' is a bit unfair. 

The three persons were: Nora May French, a turn-of-the-century poet who was talented and esteemed, but who seems to have disappeared from American Literature, and a young woman though she had emerged as a brilliant poet before her death. Carrie Sterling, married to George Sterling, whose own ambitions were not literary but who, through her husband, met and tangled with some of those, such as writer Jack London, who the Literary Canon well knows, as well as their women. Carrie often played hostess and was the wife who would stick with a bad marriage for a long time since there was social status to be mindful of. George Sterling, who was instrumental in the establishment of Carmel as an artists colony through his role as real estate agent, but who would much rather have made his living as a poet himself; My take on George is that he was alcoholic and a womanizer and not all that well psychologically. But was Nora May French to blame? 

George went out of his way to try to convince people to move to Carmel, a small town in the Monterey Bay, south of San Francisco. He encouraged group photos that made some of these artists and writers look cozy and implied they were moving there or buying real estate as a marketing strategy but not the whole truth. The big names never bought in and he struggled for acceptance by them in part because his talent as a poet never equaled theirs. History may be a bit more fair to the struggling George than this author, for he was a founder of the Bohemian Club, which is now the notorious Bohemian Grove.

These three people were not in a triad and they did not commit suicide together, but I bet because of the title of the book you thought so. Although it's complicated, I wasn't convinced that the suicide of Nora or that of George's wife, Carrie, or the eventual suicide of George was entirely motivated by relationship frustration or loss of love. Rather it was also about money - the natural need for it in this material world - and especially so for women at a time when few could support themselves; imagine any poet at any time thinking their poetry would bring in money enough. George Sterling was a founder of the Bohemian Club which endures to this day as the Bohemian Grove, but he eventually went broke.

To her credit, author Catherine Prendergast, did some difficult investigative research to bring us Nora May French, who did indeed commit suicide by cyanide in 1907, and whose poetry - and very mood - inspired copycat suicides! We know that because some of those who commit suicide did so with copies of her poetic verses on them!

Nora's end at the age of twenty-six made her infamous. Headlines remarked on her talent and beauty, calling her witty, spirited, and talented. So the media as it existed decades ago implied there was not just a shame but a mystery. There was a lot of blaming among the men who had affairs with her and it seems Nora was pregnancy prone too.

Why is so little about Nora May French preserved?  Was it because of her sad end or because she was a woman? Prendergast sees the difficulty in this research a problem of sexism. 

As I read this book from cover to cover, I couldn't help but think about the way marriage was about the only way a woman could survive back in the day. Nora May French was not the first or last woman to ever have sex before marriage or an affair with a married man/men, but she needed marriage. Society was not set up for most women to be independent of men or to earn their own money and support themselves and Nora's experience with paid employment was unfulfilling and exhausting. What any woman with creative talent, such as a writer who needed to write, was a patron or a husband rich enough to support her so she would not have to work for income herself and could keep writing. He had to be the type who didn't want a conventional wife and be someone who loved the arts and might find some prestige in having a poet as a wife..

Was Nora so foolish to have sex without marriage and also not have used contraception?  Was that "Bohemian" of her? We don't know if she had access to contraception or not. This story includes abortion. At this time in the United States when abortion rights have been cut in some states, I think about how hard it is was to be a woman with no financial support when a having and raising a child born outside of marriage. The child would be as socially unacceptable as its mother.

Nora had two abortions unmarried, at a time when a woman might, with the right connections to the right doctor, have a "therapeutic" abortion at a hospital, or brew an herbal potion that would cause miscarriage, or understand that some over-the-counter women's remedies sold at the pharmacy were intended to do the same. One was a surgical horror and the other by pills. In both cases she risked not only the ruin of her reputation but that of her family. It seems she very well may have been pregnant again when she suicided.

Nora May French came from a "good" family with ties to some historical persons such as a founder of the Wells Fargo Bank on her mother's side. However, it seems that her father, the son of an Illinois governor, experienced some failures, possibly embezzling money while at a job at a college and, with drought and a stock market crash in 1893, the family fell into poverty quickly. Nora was sent to live with a relative (ironically named Uncle Cash) who might have led her to a good marriage. She lived with him in New York and he sent her to the Art Students League but she had a indiscretion with a man and was sent home. She became the black sheep of her family.

Though she might be on the marriage market without a dowry or any expectation of an inheritance, while working as a seamstress - a lowly profession - in a leather factory, she did promise to marry a young man. 

Excerpt page 54: " ... Working in a leather factory had taken its toll on her body and spirit, Her fingers had grown dull from working the needle into the leather, her eyes strained in the low light, and she found herself too tired at night to think of lifting a pen. Her mind began to slow down, sitting among women who had nothing better to talk about than when they would get married and leave. One morning she woke up and realized that she had become one of them. She couldn't wait to get married and leave.  (Note that she was sewing leather gloves.)

Then Lee proposed. At first, she hesitated She told him everything about herself, how she was happiest wandering in the woods, how she lived to write poems, and how she would never be just an ordinary girl, if that was what he wanted..."

The engagement brought her back into approval of Uncle Cash who sent a money present and her parents relaxed that she would have a husband. However, Lee soon complained of how much time she spent writing and reminded her to prepare to be a wife and mother such as learning to cook. Female relatives of his also pressured her to conform.

In 1904, a month before the wedding, she broke the engagement. At the age of twenty-three she decided she may as well be a spinster. She sent her work out and her poetry was published in newspapers and literary journals. Nora gained a literary reputation. 

Once on the West Coast, a little older but still in her twenties, and already a published poet, Nora was involved in the Bohemian lifestyle, perhaps an experimental lifestyle at best, in which artists, writers sought a break from convention. That said, she got involved with married men and doing so did not prevent her from having sex or heartbreaks.

There was also another man who was interested in marriage with her for a while - or so it was discussed when she became pregnant - retired British Army Captain Alan Hiley of Santa Cruz, California, who was married, and a muse.

She had to live with someone, if not her sister who did not like San Francisco, then a couple such as Carrie and George Sterling. George was connected to the Bohemian lifestyle of San Francisco and also the founding of the Bohemian Club, now called The Bohemian Grove. Instead of just staying  as a house guest of the Sterlings until she married, the end of another opportunity for marriage turned her into more of a permanent guest. It was there at their house that she took the poison.

While Nora did have an affair with George, and he mourned her, he was not her only man.  And while she did use pills to miscarry, she did not take her life immediately after that. Nor was Nora the womanizing George's only affair while married. Carrie Sterling had lost any expectation that her husband would be entirely devoted or satisfied with her. Carrie had thought her marriage to George was advantageous and had to have been disappointed in his character.

Nora commit suicide in 1907 by cyanide.

Carrie commit suicide in 1918 by cyanide.

George commit suicide in 1926 by cyanide.

These suicides were years apart. I just can't call this a love triangle and am not convinced Nora was the reason for the suicides of Carrie or George.

For me, the story of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, when estimates are that up to 80% of that city was destroyed, and the resulting influx of refugees into Monterey, and how that influenced the real estate sales was of interest too. People were, like today's homeless, living in tents with their families, sometimes in the backyards of relatives or friends. 

Which brings up my question about Carmel-By-The-Sea and just how "Bohemian" and unconventional it was. You don't have to be artistic or "Bohemian" to be unhappily married or to commit adultery or to have affairs these days. Rather I think the people in this book were stuck in their circumstances including class and status expectations that they be married. Then, there is always the issue of money.

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All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.