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Alabama - Mrs. Blanchard. 11
I knew he didn't want us, but I had nowhere else to go.
"He had sold the house and was living at an expensive hotel. The furniture he had allowed me to buy, was divided among his relatives. He had even sent the piano, that had been given to Frances by one of my uncles, to his niece in Athens, Georgia. So there was nothing for him to do but take us to a boarding house. The cheapest in Atlanta! We lived there until September. Then he told me it was not suitable for a men of his standing to remain in such squalid surroundings. I suggested that we rent a house, hut he said he had a better plan, and that he would appreciate my cooperation.
"He said he saw nothing else but for me to take the children and return permanently to my people. For if he became a success as an inventor, he would he obliged to put all of his money, and all of his time into that field. The children kept him from concentrating, he said. And he could not put up with the distractions of a family and get anywhere with his inventions.
"So I came home again with the children. My father was wonderful. I wanted to get a job and work outside, but he would not hear of it while the children were young enough to need my care. He made me promise I would not leave them until they were old enough to at least partially, look out for themselves. And I never did.
"When my father died, he left me the bulk of his moderate insurance. It was not a great deal, but the children and I could not have got along without it.
"Frances had developed functional heart trouble; caused, so the doctors said, by the effect of constant unhappiness upon a sensitive temperament. They told me to keep her diverted, and to make her as contented as possible. So I rented a room in Capital Heights where in the High School she would have no stairs to climb, and my children and I began to actually, live.
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"Of course we were awfully crowded - the three of us in one room. But inconvenient as it undoubtedly was, those quarters were the only accommodations I could secure in a handsome home. And I wanted my children to have the best.
"I paid thirty dollars a month for the room. It would have been cheap at sixty. Mr. and Mrs. Moorefield who owned the house, were so lovely to me, and especially to my children, that I have always felt there wasn't enough money in the world to pay for what we received from them.
"If the children were sick, Mrs. Moorefield sat up at night to help me wait on them; and when Frances began going out to dances and parties, she assisted me in planning and making her evening dresses. She arranged ways too for her to meet the right people, and was always ready to sustain and encourage me through the trials that confront every woman in my position.
"Once however, something occurred that I never let her know anything about. Perhaps I ought not to tell you about it either. But if it were to do over again I'd go through it the same way. And what we are willing to do we should be willing to acknowledge. So I am going to tell you of something I did for my daughter.
"As I said before, the doctors had told me to keep her as happy as possible. But no girl can be entirely happy, who hasn't pretty clothes. Frances was good about doing without things as a rule. But she needed a new evening dress, and an evening wrap, and some dance slippers and a bag, and a few other trifles that amounted to a hundred dollars,
"There wasn't a chance for me to get them. I wrote to her father and told him what the doctors said, and asked him to lend me the money. I knew he had it, and it never occurred to me he would refuse. But Mr. Penton out-figured me on that as well as some other matters.
"I got a letter by return mail, saying 'Yes,' he had the money, but I could never have a cent of it for clothes, or anything else.
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"Well, I had helped to earn that money. It was just as much mine as it was his. So I sat down and wrote a check for one hundred dollars. I signed his name to it and cashed it the next moming,
"In a few days Mr. Hunter, who was Presidaat of the Planters' Bank and Trust Company requested me to come down to his office. He had just been notified that Mr. Fenton not only repudiated the check, hut had written to the bank urging my arrest as a forger. He told me this as kindly as possible, and then asked, 'Why, did you do such a thing, Mrs. Fenton?'
"I asked him if he had a daughter. He said 'yes.' I asked him if he wouldn't do anything in the world to save her life, if she were in danger, and he said 'yes'. Then I told him what the doctors (I gave their names), said ahout Frances, I told him too some of the circumstances that had led to that condition; and I let him read Mr. Fenton's letter refusing me the money, that might be the means of saving his daughter's life.
"After he read the letter, Mr. Hunter looked at me for a moment in silence. Then he said 'Mrs. Fenton, I'm going to see that that old scalawag takes up this check, or I'll have him run out of Atlanta. Hanging is too good for his sort. I'll het he led you a dog's life. But he's going to pay for it now.'
"And he did! Thanks be to Mr. Hunter. It's funny now. I always have to laugh when I think of it. But it wasn't a laughing matter when I went down to explain to the president of a bank why I had signed my husband's name to that check. I get a shivery feeling yet, sometimes, when I pass a bank. It simply did not occur to me that Mr. Fenton would refuse to meet the check. But it was a good lesson for me I guess, after all.
"Mr. Hunter came with me to the door of his office. 'I hope that girl of yours will never forget what you did for her,' he said. 'Children ought to he told of such things. It makes them realize what they mean to a parent.'
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"I didn't tell Frances however, for a long time. She was so happy at Mrs. Moorefield's I didn't want anything to shatter her pleasure, or her feeling of belonging there.
"We were six years at Mrs. Moorefield's. During that time - while Frances was a senior in High School - I got a job as a stenographer in the Welfare Department. I didn't have the money to go to business school, so I learned typing and shorthand by myself. It took me seven years to master it, but finally I did. I held the job too, until I got mad and quit. Then I went to the Ashley Hotel as assistant housekeeper. I made fifty dollars a month. And an Frances had taken a business course and secured a job, we had enough between us, to live on.
"Then like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky. Mr. Fenton appeared. Richly dressed and in a handsome car, he had come, he said, to take us to California, where he would get Frances into the movies, and let Herbert finish his education at a fashionable military school.
"When he saw that I would not go, he determined to take the children. No one could have made me believe - had I been warned in advance - that my children would do such a thing. But they left me. And went with their father to California.
"That night after they had gone, I went to the drug store and bought some chloroform, and before I went to bed I saturated my pillow with the liquid, and placed the bottle so it would slowly drain out near my face, as I was sleeping. I did not know how to live without my children. But evidently I didn't know how to die either, for I am still here. The chloroform instead of putting me to sleep made me dreadfully nauseated, and for a day or two I was quite sick.
"Later I was glad I hadn't died; because letters came from the children asking why I had not followed them to California as their father had assured them I would do. They were expecting me any day, they wrote, and unless
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I came out pretty soon, they were going to hurry straight hack to me.
"Herbert did come back a few days later. I sent him the money to make the trip. But Frances married while she was out there, and remained for several years. She wasn't happy, so she got a divorce and came back to Montgomery. 'The West and the South just don't mix,' she said when we were discussing her return. 'Besides Mother, I was homesick all the time for you. I just couldn't stand it any longer.'
'Their father has never forgiven me for their refusal to stay in California. He doesn't like it either that they are providing for me so well. No indeed! He'd like to see me toiling in a factory for my daily bread.
"I do think sometimes I'd like to have a smart millinery store like the Elizabethan. But I've never done anything really well except keep house. I am doing that now for the children. And they say I'll never be on anybody's payroll but theirs.
"Yes they are lovely children. I believe you will all like each other. I am anxious for you to get moved in. We certainly had a nice visit together this morning,
"I always said there is nothing like a good long talk for getting people acquainted."
1/31/39 S.J.