January 1 - August 4, 1941
(Box 5/Folder 3)
January 1, 1941
. . . People who get their souls warped when they are little never seem to straighten them out – just as my golf used to grow worse by practice because I did everything wrong and practice confirmed it.
January 2, 1941
Mrs. Tilghman has been intriguing to get a supervisory position on the project. Her last scheme is getting up a petition and getting all the disgruntled and the usual cheerful petition-signers to join her in asking the employment office to do something to me. I ignored it for a time, and then today I went down and talked with Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Brown at the district office. I am glad I did it. Mrs. Phelps advised me to tell Mr. Lookabaugh and Miss Fullerton, and Mrs. Brown advised me to issue her a formal warning. She and any other American citizen have a perfect right to petition anyone anytime anywhere, but she is wasting a lot of time that she might use working. It really disturbs the steady people on the project. When they come to me about it, I just thank them and tell them not to worry, but I can tell that they do.
January 3, 1941
Poor Mrs. Schumate, who needs to be worked on by a psychiatrist, showed me some of her poems and stories today. She really has something that it takes to write, but it is not evenly done. I wish she had some way of taking a course with Stanley Vestal.
She refuses to take correction and it seems impossible for her to work in a group. She was so angry at me she just sat and seethed for days. Then when she finally drove me to the place where I had to ask for her discharge, she was so relieved that she became happy and sunny spirited. She is spending the few days until the discharge becomes effective in happily discussing her writings with me and asking my advice. And when she really finds she is out of work, she will be desperately trailing from one project to another.
I went to Norman to confer with Dr. Wardell and Mr. Lottinville about the GUIDE BOOK. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, for besides the business I saw Helen Burton, Dr. Dale, the Emorys, and several less important people. Sleepy again. (Last night I was so sleepy I was afraid to read the day’s page in VICTORIOUS LIVING.)
Mr. Lottinville wants my ROAD TO DISAPPERANCE so badly I promised to wire for it tonight, but I am so tired I guess I’ll wait till tomorrow.
January 5, 1941
I went home this week-end. I had a lovely time as always, but I was very lazy and got nothing done. My dear mother is so generous and unselfish I am always imposing on her unless I watch myself. We made some candy and she made me bring back all that was left.
I rode up on the train with our preacher boy. He told me that Eula Mae Goodnight and Donna Ruth Clark had joined the church the Sunday before. I am so happy about it.
On the way back the train was crowded form Guthrie on, and I rode with a charming boy from Pawhuska who is a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. I like young people.
January 10, 1941
I gave Mrs. Tilghman a formal reprimand today. It is issued on a certain form, and it goes to the employment office and remains a part of her permanent record. I have been too patient with her. She once had a supervisory position on the project, but since I have been in charge she has only a relief status. I realized that her situation was rather difficult, especially since she is a writer who has really received a good bit of recognition in this state, and I did everything I could to treat her with respect and make her feel that we were working at the job together. But it is absolutely impossible to teach her to do research. She works like a house afire, turning off page after page with an error on every one. I cannot use what she turns in unless I check it myself or get somebody else to check it. I have turned back literally hundreds of pages asking her to correct them, but she resents it and tries to cover her tracks by more errors. She has always wanted a supervisory position on the project, and how happy I should be to give it to her if only she were the sort of person I could use! Lately she has been resorting to intrigue to gain her ends. For that very reason I hesitated to issue the reprimand, but after all it is not fair to the careful workers to let her escape her just punishment solely because she is trying to displace me. There is no way in which she can hurt me, hence I have no temptation to be vindictive, but I cannot lean so far backwards that I impede the work. She trembled and looked angry when I gave it to her, but she didn’t say much. I am anxious to see whether it drives her to more intrigue or whether she really will try to improve her work.
January 16, 1941
I got a batch of reviews today from the Princeton [University] Press – extra copies that they sent on to me. Except for one or two unimportant ones, these were the first I have seen. And they were so favorable; and all of them said the book was “objective,” “cold and precise,” “without emotionalism,” etc. I am glad none of them felt I was a sob sister, sentimentalizing about the wrongs suffered by the noble red man. I started out to write a history of something that seemed worth investigating, and it was not my choice that it turned out as it did. My book will arouse plenty of hostility, and it would have been so easy for these potential enemies to say that I was a hysterical female that knew nothing about Indians or practical things like facts. But now that so many have emphasized the opposite trait, I feel that I am protected in the place where I might have appeared vulnerable.
January 26, 1941
Last week Marie Schwalbe and I took a trip in the interest of the Guide Book. We visited cities, drove around parks, and checked mileages of tours. We worked pretty fast – Marie works that way, anyhow – and we got a lot done. Along with other things we had a thoroughly good time. . .
February 3, 1941
I sent my watch to the factory today. I don’t know why I had to have the bad luck to get a Hamilton watch that won’t run.
I got a review today by Stanley Vestal from the New York Herald Tribune. It was very favorable, but very dull and stupid. Stanley Vestal is such a brilliant writer that he must have gone to sleep reading it – which is a sin I must answer for.
February 13, 1941
I have just about decided to attend the Institute on the Future of the American Indian in New York March 4-7. I might contribute something to the discussion that would really help in formulating policies since I have made a study of one Indian situation so recently and so thoroughly. Also I should enjoy going. But the real reason is that I have the selfish idea that in some way it might help me. Such is human nature, or at least my nature!
I have also decided, or just about decided, to quit my job the first of April. It is the kind of job at which it is impossible to accomplish very much. I have too much red tape to get time to write. I should be happy in the thought that I might do something for the people on the project, but the labor relations people throw so many monkey wrenches into the machinery that I don’t think I am doing much for the project employees. I could work so happily with them if I was just given the chance, and that would compensate for me not being allowed to write.
February 23, 1941
It snowed beautifully today. I went to church in the morning intending to go to Britton to see Aunt Nettie in the afternoon, but I stayed at home because of the snow.
I have notified Miss Fullerton that I intend to leave about April 1. I wish it had been the kind of job a conscientious person could hold. But it wasn’t. I was wasting my life and Government money. I have many fine and deserving people on my project, but they are not writers. I shall see hard times financially, but I shall own my own soul.
February 24, 1941
I went to Norman on project business. While I was there I had the satisfaction of seeing the first page of my Creek book in print. It looks pretty nice.
February 25, 1941
Poor Mr. McCool, who can’t keep from drinking, is all to the bad today. I shall have to get rid of him yet. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do.
March 20, 1941
I took the trip to New York. Left March 2 and returned March 9. Just about worked my head off getting the Guide ready for the publisher when I quit my job the evening of March 14. Mr. Oskison took it down to Savoie the morning of March 15. It is not entirely approved by Washington, but all but the Cities section is virtually done. I think there is nothing that will delay composition.
The book does not suit me as well as though I had written it myself, but I think it is not so bad. I am sure it has many grievous errors, but I could not be everywhere at once. I think in general it will be a useful book, and some of the work I did myself is really accurate.
The whole business of a writers’ project is socially wrong. There are no unemployed writers. When uneducated women who should be in the sewing room or uneducated men who should be engaged in manual labor attain the dignity of white collar projects there is no amount of training that can make writers out of them. And some of the employees are really educated, capable of doing satisfactory graduate work at a university, but even that does not make them writers; the best I can hope for from them is that they will do accurate research under supervision. And the more and better the research, the more it piles up in useless bales while the writing waits.
I think some adjustment could have been made, some solution of this fundamental difficulty if Miss Fullerton or Dr. Wardell had realized its seriousness. But Miss Fullerton is busy and naturally is guided by Dr. Wardell. And Dr. Wardell is incapable of writing himself and unfamiliar with any kind of sincere effort. He is a four flusher who gets jobs by clever manipulation of wires and makes pontifical pronouncements that sound scholarly unless one knows better. He thinks if one is given forty people to help one should turn out books by wholesale. Since he himself cannot write he has no conception of what writing is. So he blithely decides that a book should be done by a certain time or else. Well, he will never get any writing done unless better conditions are created on the project.
I am not sorry I resigned. Badly as I need the money, I cannot reconcile my conscience to using Government money in a way that is not socially or culturally constructive.
March 24, 1941
Nothing in particular happened, but it was a nice day. I got an invitation to a Southern writers’ autograph party in North Carolina in August. I wonder if it would pay me to go. Of course I should enjoy it, but I cannot afford it unless it will pay. I am going to be broke from now on perpetually.
March 26, 1941
I got a review today from the Social Studies. The magazine was sent me by Alban W. Hoopes, the writer of the review. It shows such painstaking labor that I wrote to thank him; he didn’t review it without reading it, and some do. I don’t think, however, that he read to much purpose for he drew some very untenable conclusions from it. I can just imagine him as a very dull, pedantic person laboring over his attempt to say something profound. I get plenty of favorable reviews, but few of them are intelligent; possibly if they were intelligent they would be less favorable, but I think I should like them better.
March 28, 1941
I ironed this morning. This afternoon I packed up some stories I wrote once and sent them to Mr. Buse. I don’t know how to write stories; I have handled factual material too much. I don’t even like the artificial briskness one must affect in producing a short story. Even if I knew how to do it, I shouldn’t care for it. But he wanted to look at them, and so I sent them on. It will cost nothing but the postage. . . .
April 5, 1941
It was a perfect day. The children in their bright uniforms looked so lovely and strong and carefree. It wrings one’s heart to see them swinging down the street and to think what pitiable little islands of the world still have space for youth and growth and laughter. And very likely this is the last time our own youngsters will ever march so free.
April 11, 1941
Went over to the church to be one of a group to clean it in preparation for the Easter service. Found everyone else had discovered urgent business elsewhere except Mrs. Lyons. But we two went to work like the women on the Dutch Cleanser can. We went clear to the backsides of everything, and the church shines. Mrs. Lyons is one of those people who work in good spirits; she didn’t say one word about those who were absent, just went to scrubbing and scouring as though she had perfect good will for everything but dirt.
I was so touched and pleased at receiving a lovely clock as an Easter present from the Writers’ Project.
Made myself a housedress. It was about time. I just had one with long sleeves, and it was splitting like a locust’s skin.
Went this evening to the church to see the children induct their leaders into office by a candle lighting service. It was lovely. They are so young and sweet and earnest. I hope they have a civilized world in which to grow up.
April 13, 1941
The Easter service was perfect. So many of our people, who have been kept away by bad weather and sickness and have sort of lost the habit of attendance, were back in their places. Several children and babies were baptized, and a number of the older children came into the church.
It started raining just as church was dismissed, and rained more or less all day. Just the best kind of rain, lots of water falling, but none running away.
August 1, 1941
I finished an article for The Writer. I hope they take it. It purports to tell how to write local history.
This is a pretty warm day with showers collecting all around, but none coming to us.
The mocking bird sang all night last night. This is the day for him to quit, and I have not heard him once. I do not think, however, that he takes the calendar quite that seriously.
August 2, 1941
I went down town hoping I could see some of the old-timers who could give me the early history of Marshall. It was not a successful afternoon. I have never formed the habit of spending Saturday afternoon in town. When I was a child I wanted to because the other girls did, but my parents always worked. Loafing all afternoon seemed wicked to them, and I formed the habit of going down strictly for business. It is surprisingly hard for me to go down and stand and talk. It seems to me I should be rushing about somewhere. I wonder if I can ever form the habit of loafing. It really seems to me, now that I have watched people do it, that it is a wholesome thing to do. And it is rather shocking to me to realize how I have dropped out of community things. Of course there are many people who feel just as our family do about it, but they were not the ones I saw on the street. . . .
August 3, 1941
After church I went out to the Lou Cromer’s to spend the day. I enjoyed the visit and Mr. Cromer told me of the early days around Marshall. I am not sure I shall use this material, but I am collecting it. I have been away so much and am out in the country so seldom, that the whole countryside as I pass through is peopled with the ghosts of other days when I was a child and drove and rode horseback over it.
August 4, 1941
I transcribed the notes I took on the interview with Mr. Cromer. Then this afternoon we got a chance to get some fine peaches from a man that came by. They were too ripe, and he sold them at one dollar a bushel. We thought we could handle one bushel before they would spoil, and we did some blitz canning. Got them all done, but got terribly tired.
Mrs. Schrage came over and notified me that the Dramatic Art Club (a very inaccurate name for a study club) had elected me to membership. I was pleased, but am puzzled because the other local club has elected me twice and I refused both times on the pretext that I was too busy. The fact was I had no money to pay dues. Now I feel under obligation to them. I will see Winnie Branen and ask her about it, before I decide to go into the other. . . .