Aren't those words like a strong wind blowing from the sea? I just
love them. And I know you will. I am so glad that I can talk to you
of such things. Everybody has to have a friend who can understand--and
that's the fine thing about our friendship--that we both have things to
overcome, and that our letters can be reports of progress.
Of course the things which I have to overcome are just little fussy
woman things--but they are big to me because I am breaking away from
family traditions. All the women our household have followed the
straight and narrow path of conventional living. Even Grace does it,
although she rebels inwardly--but Aunt Frances keeps her to it. Once
Grace tried to be an artist, and she worked hard in Paris, until Aunt
Frances swooped down and carried her off--Grace still speaks of that
time in Paris as her year out of prison. You see she worked hard and
met people who worked, too, and it interested her. She had a studio
apartment, and was properly chaperoned by a little widow who went with
her and shared her rooms.
But Aunt Frances popped in on them suddenly one day and found a
Bohemian party. There wasn't anything wrong about it, Grace says, but
you know Aunt Frances! She has never ceased to talk about the frumpy
crowd she met there. She hated the students in their velvet coats and
the women with their poor queer clothes. And Grace loved them. But
she's given up the idea of ever living there again. She says you can't
do a thing twice and have it the same. I don't know. I only know that
Grace may seem frivolous on the outside, but that underneath she is
different. She has taken up advanced ideas about women, and she says
that I have them naturally, and that she didn't expect such a thing in
Washington where everybody stops to think what somebody else is going
to say. But I haven't arrived at the point where I am really
interested in Suffrage and things like that. Grace says that I must
begin to look beyond my own life, and perhaps when I get some of my own
problems settled, I will. And then I shall be taking up the problems
of the girls in factories and the girls in laundries and the girls in
the big shops, as Grace is. She says that she may live like a
bond-slave herself, but she'd like to help other women to be free.
And now I must tell you about Delilah Jeliffe. She had a house-warming
last week. The old house in Georgetown is a dream. Delilah hasn't a
superfluous or gorgeous thing in it. Everything is keyed to the
old-family note. Some of the things are even shabby. She has done
away with flamingo colors, and her monkeys with the crystal ball and
the peacock screen. She has little stools in her drawing-room with
faded covers of canvas work, and she has samplers and cracked
portraits, and the china doesn't all match. There isn't a sign of "new
richness" in the place. She keeps colored servants, and doesn't wear
rings, and her gowns are frilly flowing white things which make her
look like one of those demure grandmotherly young persons of the early
sixties.