Learning from the 'Log Cabin Lady'
Created | Updated Apr 29, 2018
Learning from the 'Log Cabin Lady'
Editor's Note: Sometimes I read a text and think, 'We have no idea what other people have been through.' This little excerpt may help us along the road to understanding. It comes from the 1922 The Log-Cabin Lady: An Anonymous Autobiography. The editor of this volume, Marie M Melony, was obviously one of those feminist leaders who had to contend with feminists who faulted her for writing for housewives, because obviously, being a housewife was not what feminism was really about. She should stick to her support for Madame Curie: women scientists and such, that was feminism. In her defence, Ms Melony pointed out that at that time, 8% of American women had servants. She wrote in women's magazines for the rest of them. You see where we're going with this.
After that discussion, which took place in 1920, a very prominent diplomat's wife took Ms Melony aside and confessed that she had grown up as one of the 92%: in fact, she was born in a log cabin, and grew up without any of the things these society ladies believed were part of the trappings of true civilisation. Ms Melony begged her to share the story for the sake of other women. Reluctantly, the embarrassed woman agreed to do it, under guarantee of anonymity.
The anonymous author of this memoir wasn't confessing to an early life of crime. Or drug addiction. Or cannibalism.
She was confessing that she was fifteen years old before she ever saw a cloth table napkin.
You need to read this. Seriously. You'll understand human diversity so much better afterwards.
And don't laugh. Your notions (and mine) are every bit as silly, sub specie aeternitatis. Trust me on this.
The Log Cabin Lady
I was born in a log cabin. I came to my pioneer mother in one of Wisconsin1's bitterest winters.
Twenty-one years later I was sailing for England, the wife of a diplomat who was one of Boston2's wealthy and aristocratic sons.
The road between – well, let it speak for itself. Merely to set this story on paper opens old wounds, deep, but mercifully healed these many years. Yet, if other women may find here comfort and illumination and a certain philosophy, I am glad, and I shall feel repaid.
The first thing I remember is being grateful for windows. I was three years old. My mother had set me to play on a mattress carefully placed in the one ray of sunlight streaming through the one glass window of our log cabin. Baby as I was, I had ached in the agonizing cold of a pioneer winter. Lying there, warmed by that blessed sunshine, I was suddenly aware of wonder and
joy and gratitude. It was gratitude for glass, which could keep out the biting cold and let in the warm sun.
To this day windows give me pleasure.
My father was a school-teacher from New England, where his family had taught the three R's and the American Constitution since the days of Ben Franklin's study club3.
My mother was the daughter of a hard-working Scotch immigrant. Father's family set store on ancestry4. Mother's side was more practical.
The year before my birth these two young people started West in a prairie schooner to stake a homestead claim. Father's seaman's chest held a dictionary, Bancroft's History of the United States, several books of mathematics, Plutarch's Lives, a history of Massachusetts, a leather-bound file of Civil War records, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Shakespeare in two volumes, and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow5. My mother took a Bible.
I can still quote pages from every one of those books. Until I was fourteen I saw no others, except a primer, homemade, to teach me my letters. Because Vanity Fair contained simpler words than the others, it was given me first; so at the age of seven I was spelling out pages of the immortal Becky6.
My mother did not approve, but father laughed and protested that the child might as well begin with good things.
After mother's eighth and last baby, she lay ill for a year. The care of the children fell principally on my young shoulders. One day I found her crying.
"Mary," she said, with a tenderness that was rare7, "if I die, you must take care of all your brothers and sisters. You will be the only woman within eighteen miles."
I was ten years old.
That night and many other nights I lay awake, trembling at the possibility of being left the only woman within eighteen miles.
But mother did not die. I must have been a sturdy child8; for, with the little help father and his homestead partner could spare, I kept that home going until she was strong again.
Every fall the shoemaker made his rounds through the country, reaching our place last, for beyond us lay only virgin forest and wild beasts. His visit thrilled us more than the arrival of any king to-day. We had been cut off from the world for months. The shoemaker brought news from neighbors eighteen, forty, sixty, even a hundred and fifty miles away. Usually he brought a few newspapers too, treasured afterward for months. He remained, a royal guest, for many days, until all the family was shod9.
Up to my tenth birthday we could not afford the newspaper subscription. But after that times were a little better, and the Boston Transcript began to come at irregular intervals. It formed our only tie with civilization, except for the occasional purely personal letter from "back home."
When I was fourteen three tremendous events had marked my life: sunlight through a window-pane; the logrolling on the river when father added two rooms to our cabin; and the night I thought mother would die and leave me the only woman in eighteen miles.
But the fourth event was the most tremendous. One night father hurried in without even waiting to unload or water his team. He seemed excited, and handed my mother a letter.
Our Great-Aunt Martha had willed father her household goods and personal belongings and a modest sum that to us was a fortune. Some one back East "awaited his instructions."
Followed many discussions, but in the end my mother gained her way. Great-Aunt Martha's house goods were sold at auction. Father, however, insisted that her "personal belongings" be shipped to Wisconsin.
After a long, long wait, one day father and I rose at daybreak and rode thirty-six miles
in a springless wagon, over ranchmen's roads ("the giant's vertebra", Jim Hill's men called it) to the nearest express station, returning with a trunk and two packing cases.
It was a solemn moment when the first box was opened. Then mother gave a cry of delight. Sheets and bedspreads edged with lace! Real linen pillowcases with crocheted edgings. Soft woolen blankets and bright handmade quilts. Two heavy, lustrous table-cloths and two dozen napkins, one white set hemmed, and one red-and-white, bordered with a soft fringe.
What the world calls wealth has come to me in after years. Nothing ever equaled in my eyes the priceless value of Great-Aunt Martha's "personal belongings".
I was in a seventh heaven of delight. My father picked up the books and began to read, paying no attention to our ecstasies over dresses and ribbons, the boxful of laces, or the little shell-covered case holding a few ornaments in gold and silver and jet.
We women did not stop until we had explored every corner of that trunk and the two packing boxes. Then I picked up a napkin.
"What are these for? " I asked curiously.
My father slammed his book shut. I had never seen such a look on his face.
"How old are you, Mary?" he demanded suddenly.
I told him that I was going on fifteen.
"And you never saw a table napkin?"
His tone was bitter and accusing. I didn't understand – how could I? Father began to talk, his words growing more and more bitter. Mother defended herself hotly. To-day I know that justice was on her side. But in that first adolescent self-consciousness my sympathies were all with father.
Mother had neglected us – she had not taught us to use table napkins10! Becky Sharp used them11. People in history used them. I felt sure that Great-Aunt Martha would have been horrified, even in heaven, to learn I had never even seen a table napkin.
Our parents' quarrel dimmed the ecstasy of the "personal belongings." From that time we used napkins and a table-cloth on Sundays – that is, when any one remembered it was Sunday.
Editor's Note: We shouldn't mock these people. I remember when my mom bought a cut-glass punchbowl set with Green Stamps (children of the Fifties will understand). It got used a lot at parties. I was much older before I found out that originally, punch bowls were meant to hold something other than a mixture of ginger ale and rainbow sherbet. Every upbringing has its peculiarities.
What upsets me reading this is the lack of warmth in that family. Also: it was true the work was hard, the winters cold, 'civilisation' lacking. But can you imagine the wildlife? The plant diversity? The miles and miles of no cell phone towers or tarmac? Some people treasured this beauty – read Gene Stratton-Porter. I want to cry for that lonely little girl and her fear of being 'the only woman for 18 miles'. I also want to clock her Bostonian father, for numerous reasons, including being mad about the table napkins.
That's why we read these things. These people reach across time and grab us by our emotions. We care about them. That's why you write, you know: so you can reach across time and grab someone else.
