Chapter 4   My Father, Ethel Jaynes, Marriage, War and Tragedy   We last saw my father in medical school. But now he has graduated, has spent a year traveling throughout Europe and studying in Germany - and is exploring the best way to make a living with all he has learned. He seems to have found a pretty clear road - and one leading to romance, not just employment:  On my return [from his year in Europe] I became assistant to Dr. Edward Reynolds. I also taught as the first alumni assistant in obstetrics at the Harvard Medical School. During this time I roomed with Gorham Brigham and Bill Parker at 416 Marlboro Street, where we had our offices. This was in 1912-13. In 1913 we moved our offices to a building further up Marlboro Street, owned by Dr. DeNormandie. That year Gorham Brigham was married to Helen McKissock. Not having much to do evenings, I often went out home. Father had moved to 23 Prince Street, in West Newton, while I was first or second year in medical school, so that my sister Katharine would be nearer to the Carroll School where she went. In West Newton there was a very active dramatic club, "The Players." Having time on my hands, I decided to try for a part in an amusing play by Jerome K. Jerome which they were putting on in the fall of 1913. I had bought a Ford car a year before and could be on telephone call. My practice consisted chiefly in assisting older doctors and in etherizing, so nothing interfered. The leading lady was Ethel Jaynes who lived at 76 Prince Street. It wasn't long before I became definitely "interested." Before New Year's we were engaged, and married June 17, 1914. My mother was also a member of the "Players" group, as we have already seen! The plot thickens. The ideal summertime images of Journey's End and the pre-war satisfactions of a teaching job that we have seen as her life until now are being imperceptibly overshadowed by darker ones as we approach the brink of World War I and unexpected tragedy! The year is 1912. It begins, auspiciously enough, as my father tells it so briefly, with romance culminating in a big church wedding. My aunt Katie's account of the meeting of two of these three people is more vivid and more detailed than my father's: It was at the same time my sister Dorothea finished at Miss Sacker's School of Design in Boston. I am not sure if Dot had gone to New York to visit the Todd sisters who had an apartment in Greenwich Village on the lower west side, but she had quite a social life with Betty Upham and other friends, both of them acting in the Players Group which was amateur but well organized. Stuart Chase, the future well-known economist, and Osgood Perkins the actor got their training here. My brother had been concentrating too hard in his studies and he had next to no friends or social life, and for once the two of them, my brother and sister, were sympathetic with each other. Dot urged him to join The Players both for fun and as a way of finding new patients. She and Betty had leads in a light comedy, two old ladies who were meddling in the lives of the other actors. Rehearsals had started but there was a minor part of a butler and my brother was given this. The leading lady, Ethel Jaynes, was slight of build, her reddish brown hair casually held in place with a couple of hairpins, her eyes, her quick gestures, alive and sparkling, and everyone liked her. She lived up the street from our house, the only daughter of the red-headed minister who gave interesting scholarly sermons in a large Unitarian church which had many wealthy parishioners. In the play Ethel had some conversation with the butler, my brother. Shortly his Ford coupe was often parked in front of the minister's house, and not on rehearsal nights. These events were even closer to Harriet's heart than Katie knew! Years before, Harriet and her dearest childhood chum Ethel Jaynes had made a girlish pact that they would never marry. Until now, there had been no indication she knew of that either of them had changed her mind! But now, suddenly, Ethel tells Harriet that she has fallen in love with this handsome young man, Donald Macomber, who has finished his medical school training at Harvard Medical College and is in practice as an assistant to a Dr. Reynolds in Boston. Harriet vaguely remembers Donald as a rather overwhelming classmate at Newton High School. Starry-eyed, Ethel tells Harriet that he has swept her off her feet, that his enthusiasm is irresistible, and that she has decided she wants to marry him and become a doctor's wife! She asks Harriet to be the maid of honor at the wedding. So Donald Macomber and Ethel Jaynes are married by her father at the Unitarian Church - with Harriet as the maid of honor. Here's my mother's rueful account of the wedding: In 1913 Ethel Jaynes had asked me to be the maid of honor at her wedding to Donald Macomber in June. I really felt it an honor since we had been separated for so many years, I in New York and Bryn Mawr, she in Paris studying singing, and on her return busy with pupils in both music and French. ... I had been trying to get the vegetable garden at Journey's End all seeded before June 17, the wedding day, and had developed a tremendous sunburn blister on the nape of my neck. As the minister's daughter, Ethel had to have a big church wedding. At the rehearsal, the best man, who had assumed the running and criticism of the occasion, announced loudly after the first time down the aisle, "Everyone was in step but the maid of honor," which didn't exactly endear him to me. The next day came; I wore a luscious apricot low-necked gown (it was the year of hobble skirts) with turquoise details. Ethel Freeman had plastered my neck with actor's grease paint, and did a professional make-up job, which really covered the raw skin, and I wore a heavy pearl necklace! At the familiar chords we started to march down the aisle, six bridesmaids and ushers, behind me; at about the tenth pew, pop went my string of beads, scattering in every direction! The entire wedding-party demonstrated superb self-control and did not wink an eyelash, though stepping warily, while kind guests on the aisle seats gathered most of the pearls after we had passed. My only other experience in a church wedding was equally disheartening. When about six years old, I acted as flower-girl for an aunt. As I passed proudly down the aisle behind the bride, scattering rose petals, I heard a man on the end-seat whisper subvocally to his wife, "My God, will you look at that child's legs - broomsticks!" I had some undiagnosed illnesses and had suffered from excruciating leg pains. A physical examination when I was in my twenties showed one leg shorter than the other. Dr. Lovett of Boston, one of the first men to investigate polio, felt that I had almost certainly had a mild attack as a small child, which atrophied my calf muscles. But the careless comment hurt even more than ever did the polio. Here's Katie's account of the wedding: The speed of the announced engagement and the plans for a June wedding startled the church goers. It was funny how my quiet and elderly parents and I were pushed into local society. We were invited to the busy minister's house where phone calls interrupted the engagement dinner. Wine was served to toast the young couple and iced creme de mint followed dessert with crackers and cheese. We were made a great fuss over by people who had paid no attention to us. My mother gave a mammoth afternoon tea for Ethel, Ethel making out the list of her friends. Betty, Eleanor and I [Katie's three inseparable school chums] passed out tiny sandwiches, ices and petit fours from The Ladies Exchange in Boston, and our regular cook in the kitchen had two helpers for continuously washing up, replacing with clean dishes. Ethel's mother served tea, and my pretty Aunt Blanche seated at the other end of the big table served coffee. Ethel displayed her diamond engagement ring, and we three girls gorged on leftovers after the guests left. The wedding itself seemed to include half the town of West Newton, and as the presents came in each had to be listed and marked up in a book by number, a duplicate number glued to the gift. There were innumerable duplicates, which Ethel was allowed to exchange. We three girls felt all weddings should be on this scale, and I have to laugh at my own, two witnesses and New York City Hall. For this wedding how lucky we could not foretell the near future. For their honeymoon they spent a couple of days at our cottage at Lake Sunapee (Dot and I had raced up there a couple of weeks ahead and left the place in working order). Then my brother had an odd job looking after a teenage son of a wealthy man who provided a cottage of their own on Squam Lake.  But the lives and times of people and of entire countries were now beginning to change rapidly all over the world with the advent of war, and the fortunes of my family were to change with them, equally drastically, and equally tragically. My father's account resumes as follows: For various reasons which I need not specify, I had failed to get a staff appointment to the Lying-In Hospital [which Katie's chapter,"My Brother and My Sister" which I reproduce here as Chapter Eleven, "My Father and his Sisters" below, details so poignantly]. I had determined to set up an office in West Newton and go in for general practice while still continuing to assist Dr. Reynolds and other surgeons and give anaesthesias. In making the transition, I had an opportunity to act as physician to the Harvard Engineering Camp at Squam Lake in New Hampshire. I had spent some four or five weeks the previous summer as doctor with Mr. Harold Coolidge whose son was a patient of Dr. Dan Jones. They made it possible for me to have a cottage on the Sandwich end of the lake from which I could carry on a general practice as well as see patients at the Engineering Camp. I hired a motor boat so that I could get to patients by "land or by sea", and thus I had a set-up for a wonderful honeymoon which would pay for itself. All I had to do was to pass the New Hampshire state board examination. This I did before we were married. We had a wonderful summer (including a week or ten days at Sunapee) and all went well. Even the beginning of World War I had very little effect on our lives here in America in those early months. Ethel and I lived at 76 Prince Street with her mother and father, but I had an office at 41 Highland Street in a house owned by the Romkeys. The war in Europe, which has begun in 1914, has at first little impact on them, as he says, but war fever is beginning to rise despite President Wilson's efforts toward maintaining the peace. That winter, as he says, they live with Ethel's parents, who gives them two rooms on the second floor, a living room and a bedroom, furnished with heavy mahogany matching furniture, wedding gifts from well-to-do members of the church. As they eat with the parents there are barrels and crates of dishes, glassware, anything one could think of, all stored in the basement, some never to be unpacked for years. In August of the year l914, Europe begins to be torn apart. Ethel gives birth to her first baby by Cesarean section. Katie describes the event as follows: In October my sister-in-law gave birth to a little girl. It was a Caesarean operation because Ethel was small-boned and of slight build, and the baby was big, full of energy, and enchanting. After school both of us [Katie and her best friend Eleanor] would stop in - the minister's house was opposite Eleanor's - and Ethel would let us play with the baby, and we could give Ethel a break. She names her little girl Jeanne, a French name which reflects her love of everything French. Ethel has studied French and singing in Paris for a year before her marriage and loves to chatter to the baby in French, sing French songs with her and in general, seems to thoroughly enjoy being a new mother! My father describes the same event, first offering us an explanation of its extreme brevity: I find these reminiscences running to an inordinate length; I have decided, therefore, to bring them to an end with a few dates and facts. Perhaps some later date I will add some more details, but for the present enough is enough. Oct. 8, 1915, Jeanne was born by Caesarean. Ethel's mother had not been well and died not long after, but she lived long enough to hold her new grandchild. The creeping sense of darkness that has started as the country watches Europe being devastated by war now appears to be spreading into private lives. With the German invasion of Belgium, stories of atrocities begin appearing in the press of women raped, babies impaled on bayonets and old people slaughtered in cold blood by invading "Huns," and war fever now rises to a such a pitch that even President Wilson, whose campaign for election has been won by the slogan, "He kept us out of war!" can no longer hold out against public furore against the Germans! All which has seemed very well with the young couple's lives ends with Ethel's second pregnancy. Carrying twins, she has another Cesarean section on March 19th which, apparently, is very poorly handled. My father's account is even briefer than that of the birth of his first child: The twins were born March 19, 1917, also by Caesarean. Ethel developed peritonitis and died soon after. When Mr. Jaynes planned to remarry, I moved to 23 Prince Street with the babies. For me, the brevity of these passages covers the underlying pain still inherent in their chronicling. My mother's description to me of this harrowing event, although not written down, was more explicit, and for this reason, more revealing of the attitude toward birth my father developed later on toward his own two daughters which was to impel him to insist on delivering their babies himself when faced with their pregnancies. According to my mother's account, after extracting the babies from Ethel's uterus, the doctor decides to remove her appendix as well, but fails to seal the stump securely, and she develops peritonitis. After growing steadily worse for several weeks, she finally sinks into a coma and dies. My mother told me that, close to the end of Ethel's life, she shut herself in her bathroom and prayed and implored God to save her dear friend. "When Ethel died," she told me, "I decided there was no God." During the rest of her life she was a self-proclaimed atheist, although that fact didn't deter her from becoming a Unitarian during the years we lived in both West Newton and then Lincoln, Massachusetts before the Depression of 1929. Remembering how my own brand-new conversion to Catholicism died after I met my own skeptical husband Bill - whose academic field was philosophy - I suspect my father's scientific bent may also have had something to do with her self-proclaimed, lifelong atheism, but who knows? My mother also says that on her deathbed, which had been a slow and agonizing experience for everyone, as Katie tells us, Ethel begged both Donald and Harriet to marry, to take care of her babies, telling them that she didn't trust anyone else! My father describes it very briefly as follows: Harriet Seaver had been Ethel's best friend and maid of honor. It came about quite naturally that we saw a lot of each other after Ethel died. I went into the service in August, 1917, at Camp Devens. In December I was commissioned Captain and ordered to New York with Base Hospital 1166 for overseas duty. Harriet and I decided to be married quietly before I went so that she could relieve my parents and Katie of the care of the three small children. This took place Dec. 19, 1917. Because I developed pneumonia, B. H. 1166 went over to France without me. Later I was assigned to a Portland, Oregon, unit and went over in May, 1918. As he says, he had joined the army to serve overseas as a captain in the medical corps - but had caught the flu, and was hospitalized. This is one of my mother's stories I loved to hear again and again. She described the scene of their marriage vividly, making it sound very special. In her account, they are married at his bedside, my father sitting up in bed and donning a blue shirt for the occasion. But both her and Katie's accounts are different in some details. Here is the account my mother gives of the tragedy: The next winter I took a secretarial course at the Bryant & Stratton School, but before I had earned my diploma, I came down with severe tonsillitis, and was advised to drop it and recuperate for tonsillectomy. While I was convalescing from the operation, a great tragedy came to us all. Ethel Macomber died after the birth of her twin sons. It was the first time that death had hit in my own generation and was a profound shock. Her husband had been my medical director for a short time before that, so I saw a good deal of him after the funeral, since I wanted to help as much as I could with the babies. Finally he told me that it was her wish that I should bring up her children; so we were quietly married six months later in our Brookline apartment. He was in bed with his O.D. shirt over his pajamas, and unable to do more than whisper his responses because he had been taken with septic sore throat while visiting me, just before. The next morning he left to join his Army medical group in New York, and I departed for the Berkshires for recuperation, but came down with acute sinusitis. Not a very joyful honeymoon, but - we didn't know about the power of Vitamin C to raise resistance to infections in those days. Katie describes these events as follows: That was March l9th. The twins were kept in the hospital two months. We would hear reports of Ethel's condition, and my brother took to staying in the hospital. She had appendicitis. She had peritonitis (there were no sulpha drugs in those days). She was in a coma. She died the day before war was declared, April 6th. It was a chaotic time both for the country and for us personally. Every seat in the big Unitarian church was filled for the funeral where only two years before it had been decorated with white satin ribbons and bright flowers for the wedding. I sat up front with my family, squeezing a sodden handkerchief in my hand. Rev. Julian Jaynes insisted he would conduct the service as he had for the wedding. He collapsed and sobbing on the pulpit, had to be led away. I wonder now if he didn't enjoy the drama as he had the whole congregation in tears. It wasn't too much later he was dating the wall-eyed daughter of a wealthy parishioner, and they married. After the funeral things began happening fast. My brother announced he was moving back home, and he wanted the rough attic area made over into a bedroom-sitting room with many bookcases, and the carpenter whose front room was my brother's office would do this, plus a sleeping porch off my bedroom which I would share with Jeanne and her crib. The twins for the time being would stay in the hospital. Katie's account continues: Dot [her older sister, you will remember] was taking a course in occupational therapy in New York. I was still planning to go to Smith in the fall, even though my mother wanted me to go to Wellesley to be able to come home weekends. Graduation came, a pretty grim affair for me. Our class voted not to have cap and gown, but girls would wear shirtwaist (a blouse) and white piqué skirt; boys, white shirt, blue jacket and pants. My mother was still in a daze over having full care of Jeanne; my father with his constant cough - neither could attend my graduation. I drove down in the Overland alone, parked, sat through speeches, got my diploma, and drove home. Everyone else had laughing families, congratulations, plans for parties and a big school dance that evening. My father doubled the size of the garage to take in my brother's Ford coupe. Next my brother wanted to move all his furniture out of the Jaynes house (I believe the wedding presents stored in their basement were left there for the time), and with his usual impatience he would not wait for a professional mover, but, using the Overland as a truck, he and I did most of it, from the second floor at the Jaynes to the third floor in our house. Why we didn't put our backs out or break a spring in our car I don't know. Katie's account of what it was like to live through this tragic time set in the backdrop of the early wartime period is unforgettably detailed and so evocative that I reproduce it here in its entirety: Those early years of World War I were strangely romantic compared to the Hitler War or Vietnam. The attitude of the whole country was innocent, fervent, flag-waving. America was going to save France and the world, and everyone wanted to rush overseas in any capacity. My sister Dot was taking a New York course in occupational therapy given by a Mrs. Mansfield which would be useful later in helping shell-shocked soldiers, but switched to a quickie course given by the Red Cross enabling her to get overseas before my brother. My father says: I became head of an operating team and saw service in the Chateau-Thierry, St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives.  Katie's account is more evocative:  There was one early war scene which was incredible and funny. My brother was assigned as doctor to Camp Devens, a few hours' drive from our house, and he was told to report with his own equipment, bed and washing facilities. We had no folding army cot so we took a narrow cot bed and my mother found in the attic a tin wash bowl and pitcher. Dot was home at the time and she and my brother in his one uniform, sat in the front of our Overland, I in the back seat with the bed tied on cockeyed, plus blankets, sheets, towels, personal items, and a box of medical books. My parents and Jeanne gave us a tearful goodbye. After a hot cross-country ride to the town of Ayer, no one seemed to know where the camp was except there were bulldozers clearing a site out of town, and at the entrance no one had ever heard of a hospital or medical headquarters, chiefly because it hadn't been built. There were tents all over and both workmen and soldiers were more interested in dating Dot and me, as they jumped on the running board directing us. Donald got furious and Dot and I laughed as we spent an hour driving in clouds of dust trying to find where a doctor should go. Finally we found one tent which was called a medical center with the belongings of another doctor whose supplies were as primitive as my brother's. We unloaded his stuff, kissed him goodbye, and Dot and I took turns driving home. Within half an hour my brother appeared - some commanding officer gave him leave, he had met someone who was driving to the Newtons, and besides, he wanted his own car to drive back and forth. After all our tears and goodbyes his visits home became routine.   Her account is also revealing of the tensions involved: Things began moving fast. My sister in New York was finishing her nurse's aide training, and she would leave any day, but because of spies who might know the ship's schedule, the exact date was secret. Soon my brother's outfit was to sail, date unknown. He and Harriet were to be married in secret, when he came down with the virulent "flu," and rather than infect the children Harriet insisted he stay at her apartment, his outfit leaving without him. When he was well enough to sit up, they were married in her apartment. I drove my parents and little Jeanne over for the ceremony, and Rev. Julian Jaynes married them. My brother, weak, sat up in bed, and Harriet holding a big bunch of roses leaned against the pillows. I was glad when it was over with Jeanne running around examining all the breakable knick-knacks on low tables. … My brother went to France with the next medical outfit, but I remember one of these tense goodbyes we kept going through when he went in to Jeanne who was wide awake in her crib. She looked like her mother and he must have recalled what might have been as he kissed her and started to put her back in the crib. She, expecting to be picked up and played with, reached over and slapped his face. It was a jolt for each. He picked her up, spanked her hard, and tossing her back in the crib, slammed the door. You could hear her screams a block away. My father ran in, picked her up, paced up and down until she was quiet, blaming my brother for his quick temper. With all the delays my brother was able to help with the transfer of the twins. My mother's large bedroom was fitted for them, and the small dressing room off it was for the young French girl, Lola, a relative of the maids at the Jaynes house. She was under twenty, pretty, and with no knowledge of who Harriet was, she decided my brother was a catch, and at once began arranging a conference with him over the babies while he was concerned only with their care. He asked a young interne to come in once a week to check on their diet. At first Lola and this young interne took full care of the babies. Rather than vegetate, I went down to high school, and arranged to take a couple of courses in the morning, review Latin, one in French and what delighted me was biology with my dear Mr. Richardson. I would walk down with some younger students, but my three courses were over by eleven, and I walked home alone. Lola would be in the kitchen preparing the twins' formula, boiling the bottles, and I had hoped to try out my French on her but she spoke a dialect coming from a small town in Canada, and seemed hostile even though we were about the same age. With my brother having left without a goodbye to her she began to suspect that Harriet's frequent visits had more meaning than she had known, even though the marriage had been kept secret, and began acting rudely to my mother when she remonstrated that she was tossing the babies too hard as she sang French nursery rhymes to them. It did seem they were crying a great deal of the time. This state of affairs went on for a week. When my mother went in to pick up one of the twins, Lola shouted at her, pushed her out of the room, and locked the door. My mother and I were debating what to do when my father, hearing the commotion ran upstairs. He knocked on the door, and he, the mildest of men, shouted, "Lola. Open this door at once." Lola did, and he continued, "We have had enough of this nonsense. You are to pack your bag, and leave at once. I'll give you half an hour. I am calling a cab. You can go to the Jaynes house where the girls will take care of you. You are never to enter this house again." We were all speechless. The amazing thing was Lola did as he commanded and we never did see her again. Indirectly we heard that those at the Jayneses shipped her back to Nova Scotia, but for a week she telephoned daily, begging to be taken back; but my parents stood firm. We called in the young interne, Dr. Young, whom my brother had suggested, and while he was new at baby care even as I was, we managed. We found the chief reason for their constant crying was a terrible diaper rash, and worse, Lola in bathing had never pulled the foreskin back and their penises were foul with infection. We worked out a schedule, changing the formula, adding pureed spinach and beef juice, and also boiling the diapers and changing them frequently. It was impossible to get extra help, but soon we found without Lola's disturbing personality plus her inefficiency my parents and I settled into a calm, even routine. I got up at six, washed and dressed myself, changing the twins, heating their bottles, propping them up between pillows so that they more or less could feed themselves. My parents were taking care of Jeanne and getting breakfast. By eight I was off for the two mile walk to school. … My classes were arranged for the first three periods, and I was on my way home, alone this time. I remember vowing I would never, never have any children, then I would laugh, knowing I would first have to have a young man, being quite unaware he was already in college in Philadelphia. At home I began a rush of work, diapers, bottles, formula, hanging diapers out on the line in the sun. My parents had not been idle, with Jeanne running around, plus another feeding while I had been gone. Too they helped with having two to bathe. I think it took a couple of months before we had them chuckling, blowing bubbles, their skin healed. Jeanne could be mischievous, once dropping a stack of clean clothes in the tub, saying "I Mrs. 'Eeks," our faithful laundress. Or another time when she was sitting on her potty chair and she deliberately turned her mug of milk upside down, spilling it all over the floor straw matting on the floor, and daring me to spank her. Yet afternoons when I'd take her for walks people would stop to admire her enchanting smile. My mother played endless tea parties with her, and every night my father would take her up in his lap and read to her, explaining the pictures. We had one bit of luck in that austere winter, and that was Mrs. Weeks, whom Jeanne was mimicking - Mrs. Blanche Weeks, whose husband was caretaker of the Unitarian church. Both were black, respected, intelligent and their daughter was beautiful. ... I wanted to get to know her but she was a reserved woman. As a sample I once decided to make bread, and following the Fannie Farmer cookbook I set to work, but either the yeast was old or I didn't get it to rise and in final baking it was flat and hard. She then told me she baked bread all the time, but how could I feel angry she hadn't explained and helped me? She commanded respect. Shopping in those days for us was probably expensive, but there was too little time to waste going to the store, and my mother did it by phone - the meat man, the grocer, the fish man, the Italian fruit and vegetable man. They usually knew her voice and there was an exchange of weather or war news before she read her list with changes if something was fresh or new. By afternoon each store sent its horse and wagon up the hill, delivering at the back door, and at the end of the month the bill was mailed and paid. Every so often my mother would say, "That wasn't up to par, Mr. Bates," but usually we were well served. Ice cream on Sunday was delivered in a bucket packed with ice and salt, along with a box of macaroons, left on the doormat. While the house was lighted by electricity we still had an ice chest filled with ice delivered by a man who carried it in over his shoulder protected by a rubber apron. In winter the coal stove in the kitchen was kept going for warmth and maybe a stew and of course the endless diapers. The principal cooking was on a gas stove. The whole house had a coal furnace. The entry of our country into war had had a major impact on everyone's life. Katie's account makes it very vivid: ...[F]or me the biggest change was the fall of 1918 when I left for college. Harriet took the twins in June, but for the summer my parents (my father retired) and I kept Jeanne and drove, war or no war, to [their summer cottage at] Lake Sunapee for a spectacular vacation. My mother and Jeanne played endless games with blocks or tea parties with doll dishes, and my father and I were always sailing, playing golf or swimming. There were all sorts of shortages of food but we didn't care, with the lake, the woods and the mountain air. On our drives back country (there was no gas shortage as in the next war) we would come to a troop of young men forced to hike distances they weren't used to. The officer and the tough country boys were up front a mile ahead, but the stragglers were the ones we slowed down for, and would give half a dozen a lift, three seated, others hanging on the running board. Before we caught up with the officer we'd let them off and they would give grateful thanks, having saved them that extra mile hard on their blistered feet. Other than that the war was a long way off because without electricity we had no radio, and newspapers a week old. We had letters from my sister nursing at a French hospital in a small unknown town, or my brother performing operations in a tent. All their letters were censored, sometimes a phrase blacked out if the censor thought it would help the enemy. Our freshman year started off in confusion. The "flu" of 1918 hit Northampton and Smith just as classes were to begin in October. The infirmary filled, one girl died and the college went into a panic. All classes stopped and we were isolated to our respective dormitories, or we could go home. I went home for a week, but, bored, returned. There was an acute labor shortage, and in the tobacco and onion fields the farmers needed help. The college authorities decided we could work outdoors better than loafing, and every morning a truck would stop at each house and collect the girls who were dressed in middy blouse and bloomers. I worked on the tobacco farm where the tobacco leaves had been hung to dry in the huge barns. As we stripped the leaves and packed them there were clouds of dust, enough to spread flu germs, but we seemed a healthy lot. Classes finally started, and in November Armistice was declared, and while this lasted only one day (my sister wrote Paris went mad for over a week), classes were abandoned, and we paraded in blue suit-jackets and white skirts. I was made one of the leaders, running alongside eight girls abreast. At night there were bonfires, crowds of us running and singing: "It's a long way to Tipperary" or "Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parlez-vous." This was soon over and classes began in earnest. Two entries made by Katie on the subject of her own life and the impact made upon it by the unexpected death of her brother's young wife make it seem as though my mother could have taken over the care of Ethel's three young children much sooner than she did, thereby saving Katie from the frustration of having to postpone her college career. Her resentment still colors her account, I believe. She says:   My brother enlisted in the medical corps where he had an income but more, an emotional escape from Ethel's death. Ethel's dying wish had been for him to marry her best friend, Harriet, who would be a mother to the three children, and more practically, a woman who could take care of them financially while he was overseas. Today the question of where the twins would go after they left the hospital would have been to Harriet's house with a marriage before my brother left for France, and all without hesitation, but the mores of those days in l9l7 were such that it seemed unthinkable when Ethel had been dead only a couple of months.   This would have meant that the three children would have been legally provided for and lifted the burden from my elderly parents. Also I would have gone off to college in the fall as I had planned. But Harriet and her most conventional mother could not accept such a radical plan. My brother's little Ford coupe was seen parked night after night in front of the apartment house where Harriet and her mother lived. Shortly Harriet and my brother fell in love, but still she could not throw aside the proprieties. We had had Jeanne at our house since Ethel's death, and now the twins too were to come to our house.   and later, … Harriet's mother, who seemed to me a fussy and most conventional woman, probably was the reason Harriet, legally the children's' stepmother, refused to take the children for at least a year, and I stayed home from college to take care of them. Did I resent it? Yes, I did. It was called my "war effort."   My maternal gradmother, my aunt Katy, my paternal grandmother, my grandfather (barely visible), and my eager mother. Jeanne stands in front of the twins in the carriage Looking through an old photograph album recently, I came across the following letter written to my grandfather Macomber in November, 1918, nearly a year after my parents' secret marriage. It is clear that my mother wished to put her best foot forward with her new in-laws, and was relieved finally to be able to "go public" with the "engagement." Her letter was written in response to a note from him:   My dear Mr. Macomber, Your note was most welcome. I was so glad that Donald made up his mind to tell you and his mother, because I am not one to enjoy the pretenses and deceits of a secret engagement - much as I appreciate the importance of it in this case. In spite of the wrench at letting Donald go abroad, it will be a tremendous relief to me to come out in the open - even to face criticism. That will be a little thing compared to the joy I will have in the children - and my pride in Donald's service.   I hope our home will draw you and Mrs. Macomber into it very, very often. I want the children to grow up in close touch with their family - and, for their sakes, if for no other reason, I hope we can all maintain the friendliest, kindliest feelings toward one another, always.   As I was not sure when I would have an opportunity of seeing you, under safe circumstances, I thought I would like to write you just this little line to tell you how much I appreciated your note - and to assure you that I realize what a deep responsibility I am assuming - that it is not undertaken lightly or impulsively. I can only do my best and trust that I will be guided right. I hope you and Mrs. Macomber will never hesitate to advise me, if you question any of my decisions. I think you will always find me open-minded.   Hoping I can soon have a chance to get better acquainted with my father - and mother-to-be, and that you won't observe all my faults at once.   Affectionately yours, Harriet F. Seaver Brookline   Katie writes of this period,   Donald said how grateful he was that I had given up a year to care for his children. I was pleased and flattered by his interest and his concern over my life and my college, and it is at this point in my life I should have heard the warning bell that he was too interfering.   An ominous note, based on knowledge of what was to come into the lives of the three Macomber siblings, Dorothea, Donald and Katharine. That is largely Katie's story, of course, but with repercussions for my generation as well. I need to spend some time with her account, before moving on to my own life.   Move to Chapter Five    Write me at maryskole@aol.com