@jinglepostman @KarenStrickholm Thank you both for the wonderful list of book recommendations.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by [email protected]
@KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch @jinglepostman This is one that I'm fairly certain was taken on the wedding day, as Frances prepared for the wedding with her sisters Mary and Ruth assisting her, all sitting in the June sunlight on the back porch of her family. And, though not from the wedding, a three-generation photo of Frances with her mother Helen and her baby son George. This was taken after she learned she had TB and was preparing to go to the treatment center in Colorado.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @jinglepostman Truly not upper-class at all. That categorization might apply to Frances' family, the Tuckers, but not my family into which she married, the Batchelors. My great-grandparents were struggling small or middle-class farmers just south of Little Rock, whereas Frances' family had wealth and social standing in Little Rock, and were highly educated. This was a match that puzzled a lot of folks, but her diary makes clear to me it was very much a love match.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @3dogcouch @jinglepostman Train trips in skimpy clothing!!! The nastiness of female gossip is really something. Maybe because they are repressed themselves but they don't want to acknowledge that because then they'll see the degree to which they are powerless and that's painful. And so they project back out. Maybe...? I was thinking this morning about how women used to go to "charm school," learning how to be polite and demure.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @3dogcouch @jinglepostman These are marvelous! Her clothing is exquisite.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch @jinglepostman I'm not much of an expert on clothing of that era, but agree that it really is fascinating. What I notice about Frances in the photo is how sad she looks, and that tugs at my heart. She had by this point found she had TB and needed treatment, and would have to leave her son in the care of family members. Having read her diary and her thoughts about all of that, I find this really poignant.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch @jinglepostman Yes, sad that women can tear away at other women in that way. As a little girl, my mother helped the postmaster (a woman) in her town sort mail, and she told me that the postmaster told her not to listen to nasty gossip about her aunts who had died young of TB, and about how this was due to their unchaperoned train trips and the fashionable clothes they wore. The postmaster told her that the woman spreading those rumors were just jealous.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @3dogcouch @jinglepostman Indeed. She also looks deeply fatigued.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch @jinglepostman That's what I see in her eyes in that photo. And it's so apparent in her diary, in which she kept writing up to a few days prior to her death. It's heart-breaking reading. Brings me to tears anytime I read it (I made a transcript before donating it to the Arkansas Studies folks). My grandmother and John, Frances' husband, had an older sister Lilah (Delilah) who dearly loved Frances and fretted very much about her and her health.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch @jinglepostman Lilah was a "simple" country woman who lived "way back" in the country with her husband, as my family used to say. My grandfather had a store and he and my grandmother would visit Lilah on Sundays to take groceries to her she couldn't easily get living back in the country. When Lilah got news that Frances had TB, she cried bitterly. She knew that Frances loved the peanuts Lilah's husband grew, and while Frances was in Colorado at the treatment center /2
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch @jinglepostman Lilah would mail Frances packages of roasted peanuts — something Frances comments on in her diary. With her extensive education and prominent family background, Frances could have treated Lilah as an inferior, but she did not, and the two women clearly admired and loved each other. My grandmother once told Frances, as my grandmother milked a cow, that she felt inferior to Frances, and Frances replied, "How silly. I couldn't possibly milk a cow!
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Elizabeth S.replied to William Lindsey :toad: last edited by
@wdlindsy @KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch I appreciate your keeping me in this thread. I haven't been able to post but always love reading, especially great conversations like this one.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Elizabeth S. last edited by
@jinglepostman @KarenStrickholm @3dogcouch Gladly!