Darling Ro and the Benet Women , livre ebook

Darling Ro and the Benét Women

Darling Ro
and the
Benét Women
Evelyn Helmick Hively

THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Kent, Ohio
For Thomas Carr Benét The keeper of the flame
Sleep in the dust beside me, you Who never said a faithless word Or gave a kiss that was not true No matter how the dust was stirred.
—Stephen Vincent Benét
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introductions
2. Paris and Love
3. At Home
4. Marriage and Families
5. Complications
6. Baby
7. Tragedy
8. Paris Encore
9. Productive Days
10. Pain and Grief
11. From Paris to New York
12. End of a Decade
13. Good-Byes
Notes
Excerpts from Writing by Rosemary Carr Benét, 1926 to 1931
Selected Bibliography
Index
Preface
Rosemary Carr Benét came to my attention as I researched material for a study of Elinor Wylie. I found much interesting information in an exhibition of the letters of the women of the Benét family at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University; in addition to the Wylie correspondence, there were remarkable letters written by Rosemary. The notes I began to take then had to wait for several years while I published two books on Wylie. By that time, Rosemary’s son, Thomas Carr Benét, had donated many new letters and documents, which are the basis for this portrait.
For nearly ten years now I have known of Rosemary, my admiration increasing as I learn more. Everyone who wrote about her describes her charm. Frances Rose Benét, her mother-in-law, and Elinor Wylie, her sister-in-law, both called her “Darling Ro.” But she is interesting for reasons beyond her lovableness: she was a talented writer; she was the muse and collaborator of an important poet; and although she was not labeled a feminist, her attitudes were those of the new independent women of the twenties. But no woman, however strong and talented, is an island. Rosemary’s entire story emerges only as she interacts with an extraordinarily fascinating collection of family and friends and an ever-larger world. It is in those relationships that her strength is most apparent.
This is a chronicle of Rosemary’s interests and concerns during the decade of the 1920s, focusing on the Stephen Benéts’ life in Paris. Dividing history into decades for study often seems artificial, but in this case, the twenties form a distinctive entity with a beginning, middle, and end. The first stage of the Benét marriage mirrored that arc. These years for them were the shining moments of youth and love when they met people who would be lifelong friends and developed the talents that contributed much to American literature. These also were years in which Rosemary and Rachel Carr, her physician mother living in Chicago, corresponded frequently, revealing much about their families, their friends, and the era.
The couple’s young friends would become some of the most interesting artists of the twentieth century. They were in Paris to study, to feed off one other’s energy, and to enjoy life’s pleasures on meager incomes. They formed a small American community far different from that of the famous expatriates like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who chose France because of a sense of alienation from the political and social life in the States. For all of them, what they found in Paris in the twenties helped to influence the direction of twentieth-century culture.
Rosemary’s friends included artists worthy of having their own stories told, and many have had biographies written about them. Here, they are secondary characters, brought into the narrative only as their lives intersect with Rosemary’s. Even her famous husband appears only as she writes about him or as an explanation for her concerns. He, above all, deserves a new biography, in light of his role not only as a great epic poet but as a political writer who helped formulate the United States’ policies of the thirties and forties.
There is little information about Rosemary’s life in the twenties available beyond her letters. Charles Fenton’s biography of Stephen Benét almost ignores her, and a single essay on their relationship in a collection by Izzo and Konkle was written before Thomas Benét’s recent donation of Rosemary’s correspondence. Most of the letters that I quote are uncataloged, and precise citations are often impossible. The letters, frequently not dated, are not necessarily in chronological order in the library folders. In some instances a reader has added dates, a few of which are clearly wrong. For these reasons I have not cluttered the endnotes with citations that give little or no information beyond that in the text. For letters without citations, I have tried to give as much information in the chronological narrative as necessary for locating the sources in the Benét materials at the Beinecke Library. For letters found in other collections at the Beinecke or elsewhere, full citations are in the endnotes.
Acknowledgments
Many people have helped me to discover the events of Rosemary Carr Benét’s life in Paris and New York in the 1920s. Her son, Thomas Carr Benét, tirelessly answered questions and provided letters and photographs; the story can be told because of his recent donation of material to the Yale Collection of American Literature in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. His nieces, Melanie Mahin and Rosemary Birkholz, sent photographs from their private collections.
The Beinecke Library provided the superb assistance that I have found there since my graduate research in the 1960s. Patricia Willis, curator of American literature, again offered advice and encouragement for the project. Steve Young and his many assistants were knowledgeable and helpful in my navigating through material not yet cataloged.
The vice president of Books of Discovery, Melinda Blair Helmick, read an early version of the manuscript and offered many valuable suggestions, and Nancy Potter sent interesting information about the background and people of the twenties. Linda Nardi of Town and Country , Leigh Montville of Vogue , and Lisa Luna of Harper’s Bazaar helped to negotiate the inclusion of Rosemary’s early writing in the book.
For the third time, the staff at the Kent State University Press made the long process of publishing a joy. I thank Joyce Harrison, Mary Young, Susan Cash, and Will Underwood for their professional guidance and good-humored communications. To my first editor at the Press, Joanna Hildebrand Craig, I owe more than I can say.
As ever, I am grateful for the constant support of three wonderful people, Jon Sommer Helmick, Jennifer Thomas Helmick, and Melinda Blair Helmick.
CHAPTER 1
Introductions
This was meant to be just Rosemary Benét’s story. As it begins she was in her twenties, her most glamorous years. The twentieth century was likewise in its twenties, one of the most exciting in memory. And Paris was full of talented young Americans—writers, artists, and musicians who came to embrace the pleasures of that world as they studied and worked. Rosemary was ready to be part of the scene: she was bright, beautiful, and talented enough to move quickly from her college graduation to a position in Paris with the international edition of the Herald Tribune .
Her story remained for a time a kind of fairy tale of expectations, accomplishments, and love, especially after she met the poet Stephen Vincent Benét. Soon, however, it included additional characters capable of directing the events in her life, sometimes as positive influences in her rise to achievement and prominence. A few, however, demonstrated the truth of Sartre’s declaration about Hell and other people. Some were a mixture of both. But they were often people whose personalities and talents made them powerful in their influence over others, the young Rosemary among them.
Brief introductions are necessary for the fascinating men and women who make up the secondary dramatis personae of the account of Rosemary’s love affair with Stephen Vincent Benét and Paris in the 1920s. Primary among them are her parents. At home in Illinois, she had been the well-loved child of successful professionals. Thomas Carr, an exceptionally handsome naval officer, served as a deputy in the new Chicago branch of the naval office and, when that office closed, later worked as deputy collector and inspector in the Treasury Department. He had been prominent enough in Washington, D.C., circles that newspapers reported his visit as guest of Senator and Mrs. Stubblefield. Chicago papers mentioned his trips to Ireland, England, and France to buy horses in his capacity as a member of the Percheron Society and praised his efforts to help a soldier appeal a sentence.
Rosemary’s mother, Dr. Rachel Hickey Carr, one of the first women physicians to practice in Chicago, served as president of the Medical Women’s Association. In 1889 she was one of three women doctors who, in spite of government commands to stay away, left their practices to serve the victims of the Johnstown Flood. Dr. Carr was modern in many ways, especially in her knowledge of nutrition, which she used to full advantage in her supervision of Rosemary’s diet, wherever she was. But she was truly old-fashioned in treating patients as guests in her home, often examining them on her own bed. She reasoned that patients did not like the paraphernalia of doctors’ offices. While maintaining her practice, she also served as medical director for the Peoples Life Insurance Company of Illinois. Few women could boast of the kind of evaluation that her son-in-law, Stephen Vincent Benét, wrote to Laura, his sister: “She’s a wonderful person and there’s nobody like her. And of course her life story is really an epic—particularly her early years—I always listen with fascination.” 1
In another remarkable physician Rosemary found a second influential maternal figure. The doctor at her delivery was Rachel’s friend Bertha Van Hoosen, who taught at Northwestern University, the University o