Changes

Life for the Jerome Stanfords began to change radi­ cally with the depression of 1902. Without his generous Uncle Leland (Leland Stanford died in 1893) there to bail him out, Jerome had to deal with the reality of his finan­ cial reverses. He went heavily into debt in an attempt to save the wholesale wallpaper and paint business, which put a severe strain on the relationship betweeen himself and Clara. Perhaps it was not so much the loss of things, as it was her husband’s inadaguacy in handling the problem and his increasing reliance on alcohol as his panacea, that disturbed Clara. On this point, Helen defends her father with the fol­ lowing explanation: 11Life didn’t turn out to be the enchanted experience Papa had every reason to believe it would be. During his youth he lived in a stylish home, in the then exclusive neighborhood called South Park in San Francisco. He was a favorite of his Uncle Leland Stanford and had many lengthy visits in Council Bluffs and later in San Francisco in the home of Uncle Leland and Aunt Jane. Thousands of dollars were given to him by his Uncle Le­ land, just for the asking. When Papa had to stand on his own two feet after Leland’s death, he had no idea how to .do it. He deserved only sympathy, not censure. In the middle of this financial turmoil in 1903 Jerome received a request for money from his father in New York. Shortly following the unanswered solicitation there was a clipping in a New York paper dated May 7, 1903 which said: STANFORD DIES IN POVERTY Penniless, although his relatives are possessed of many millions, and at one time himself wealthy, Col. Asa Stanford, older brother of the late Leland Stanford, twice United States senator and many times a millionaire, died yesterday at 409 W. 47th Street. His sister-in-law, Mrs. Leland • Stanford, has been asked to pay the expenses of his funeral. A crushing blow fell on him three weeks ago, when, in desperate straits for money, he made a draft on a son living in California, for $100, and had it returned to him dishonored. The family always accepted Jerome’s explanation that he had no money to send to his father and felt the article was grossly unfair. There may have been more to the den­ ial, however, than poverty, since Jerome’s father, sister J and brother had all left San Francisco at the time of the divorce from Florence and his marriage to Clara. Jerome’s lack of response to his father’s plea may have been evi­ dence of an estrangement between Jerome and his father. Asa could not call on his other children for help because Mary Elizabeth had died in 1900 and Phillip Welton had died two years before in 1898. fj By late 1902 it was no longer possible to keep up the front that all was well. A change must be accepted. For Clara to lose her lovely home and the life style that J went with it filled her with deep disappointment and prob­ ably considerable pain and anger. The house had been the fulfillment of her dreams, her pride and her joy in the kind of life it meant for her. It had peaked in four years and quickly slid down to disaster. ·1 One day, when Helen was five years old, Clara sat at

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her dressing table preparing her face for the afternoon of shopping downtown. Her clothes were all laid out on the bed, including the hat and veil and the warm winter coat. Her lacy rose colored kimona hung loosly about her as she touched her face with the powder puff. After looking closely at her immage in her silver-backed, monogramed hand mirror she put puff and mirror down and turned to

J Helen who was standing beside her watching the ritual. “Helen, dear, I have something to tell you.” ‘-She paused a moment, as Helen said nothing, but questioned ·1 with her eyes. “Papa and I have decided we’re going to move from this house. Temporarily we’re goingf.to live with our friends the DeLongs. You know the DeLongs.” ·1 ‘ “But I don’t want to live with them, Mama. Let’s not do that,” Helen answered earnestly. ·1 Clara sighed, “It’s all settled, Helen. We’re only going to live in their boarding house a short time. Then Papa says we will have a home even nicer than this. It will be lovely. You shall see. Now run along, dear.” Helen knew she was dismissed and it would be best not to say any more about the move, though her mind was filled with questions. :1 And so the Stanfords gave up their lovely home which was lost along with the wholesale wallpaper and paint Jerome’s promises of a glorious future that would miracu­ ·1

business. Clara allowed herself to feel appeased with lously arise from the ashes of dispair that Clara felt was now drowning the family. She clung desperately to the hope that, indeed, Jerome would make the desert bloom again. When, after two months, he said, “We can move to a house of our own,” she put some faith in the possibility of a resurgence into a happy future. The house they moved to, however, was a rental on Washington only a few blocks from the Jackson Street house. It was a step up from the boarding house, but still far from anything like their former home. Then within the next year they again moved to another house, also on Washington Street. Clara assured her little daughter, that things were now getting better and soon, just as Papa promised, they would again have a lovely home. Everything would be as before, but as hard as Clara tried to believe, she knew they would not be. No, indeed, she thought, things would not be the same at all. There would be no more calling cards given or received, no more French conversations with Madam Sotto, nor wearing the lovely clothes she made.

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Never again would she and Jerome enjoy entertaining in 1 their unique Turkish room. Life isn’t like that! What they had lost was gone forever! For Helen, too, things were different. The Washington Street house had only two stories, unlike the Jackson Street house which had three. Nor was there any Turkish room for Helen to peek in and smell the incense. Things seemed very different here. There was a yard to play in just as there had been at the Jackson Street house, but there were not the tea parties that Mama used to have. For that Helen was glad, for it meant that she no longer had to recite a poem she·had learned in German. She was as she had when he was a baby and again in the DeLong’s 1 glad too, that she didn’t have to share a room with Leland house. Selma had returned to take care of the children and do ;l the cooking, for Clara claimed to have no knowledge of how to cook. Always, through the years Clara asserted that she knew nothing about cooking. It somehow made her feel more like the self she wanted to be if she could deny cooking as a part of her repertoire. Yet, as a grand­ mother she prepared wonderful meals. Having Selma with them again gave Clara a transient belief in a secure fu­ - ture. Helen still played with her friend, Esther Bull, whom she had known since the Jackson Street house. Esther knew how to play paper dolls the “right way.” Their paper dolls were cut from store catalogs, like Sears, Roebuck, and lived in a beautiful doll house in Helen’s bedroom. For hours at a time the two little girls would contentedly play out hei f ntasies with these paper doll families. Helen continued playing with her paper dolls even after several moves had served to separate her from Esther. One day when Helen was 12 years old she decided that she was too old for such a si ly game. She put all her paper dolls in a shoe box and went down to the base­ ment. Each time Mother told the story, at this point my eyes filled with tears. I hoped Phil and Doug wouldn’t notice, but hey usua ly did and pointed;tit out. Helen GCJll-C.l.Uu-ed ner’st6ry “I’stoo’d for a moment in front of the furnace looking at the familiar faces of my families. I opened the door and felt the· heat of the roaring fire on my face. Then in handfulls I took the 1 alike into the flames. Before I closed the door I watched paper dolls from the box and threw parents and children them curl, shrivel and disappear in ash. By then,” she concluded, 11 the tears were.streaming down my face.” When Esther and Helen started to school they made up a call to identify themselves and announce to the ·1 other, ‘it’s time to walk to school,’ or it could mean, ‘come play with me.’ It went like this: “Hipta m1niga honiga sokta lipta lay yoo hoo.” This call was passed • 1 Carol and Laurie and then to their daughters. Doug’s kids down to Helen’s children and I gave it to my daughters, learned it, too, but Phil says, with a sort of derisive laugh, “I didn’t teach it to my girls.”

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William, it seems, spent most of his time up at the cot­ tage in Glen Ellen that Jerome had given the Douglasses when he married Clara. Helen says, “Grandpa had a deep love of the country and all growing things. He was seven­ ty three when he was stricken by paralysis (a stroke?] on one of his infrequent trips to San Francisco. That was in 1904. He died three days later. Between short visits to see Grandpa at the cottage in Glen Ellen, Grandma Douglass lived in the Broderick Street home with her youngest daughter, Louise. It was the re­ sult of Margaret’s adamant disapproval of her daughter’s engagement to a non-catholic young farmer in Glen Ellen that Louise had returned broken hearted to San Francisco and a te ching job there. •• 11A y ·r ·,-tater G dma Douglass died at the .s.ae agea 3 Grandpa was when he died. Doubtless her former bouts with pneuemonia had depleted her resistance to this last at­ tack. Family tragedies were among the subjects, like family disgraces, that were hush-hushed around the child­ ren, so no impression of a sorrowing household has been :l left with me. After Grandma’s death Aunt Louise returned to Glen Ellen and continued teaching school. Many years later she married Dan Bredrop. It was less than a year after t e Stanfords had moved to the last Washington Street house that again Clara told Helen there was to be another move. :,

“Is Selma coming with us?” Helen asked.

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“No, you don’t need a nanny. You’re old enough to take care of yourself and even help me take care of Leland. Won’t that be nice?” 11 Helen wasn’t at all sure how nice that would be. It certainly was no enticement. Leland was a pest. With a child’s intuitiveness, however, Helen knew this was not the time to complain about Leland or the move. borhood. In the new house there was no cook to prepare ·l So the Stanfords moved to another rental in the neigh­ the meals, no maid to make the beds, answer the door and attend to her mistress’ needs, and now no nanny for the two children. Helen·didn’t want a nanny anyway, and she ·l

summer the two children escaped one another’s constant presence when they went to stay with Aunt Mame on her ranch in Calistoga. Aunt Mame and Clara had been schoolmates and remained •. close friends all their lives. The Benjamin ranch was a heavenly retreat for Helen throughout her preteen and early teen years. There she had a freedom of action she never knew at home. Marion was a year younger than Helen, but they were “best friends,” especially in the summers. They had two important things in common; they hated brothers and envied boys. So they became boys. At least in their imagination they were boys. They dressed in overalls and assumed boy’s names. They tore down hay­ stacks and pitched them together again, pretending they were farm hands. They fed the chickens and collected eggs as part of their game. Marion had four brothers, but Frank and Orson were the only ones who played with the guests. The other two were older. There were also other children at the ranch, for the Benjamins took in boarders for the summer. Leland went with the boys on pursuits of their own, so didn’t bother the girls. Helen writes, “There was only one spot on those three hundred acres that we were told never to go. That was Milikan Falls. The only time that Aunt Mame looked very serious was when she said, ‘Don’t go near Milikan falls! Not ever.’ ·And Mr. Benjamin added enough to the warning that made us feel we wouldn’t want to go near the old 1 chasm that was a bottomless pit filled with inky black

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water. We were even to stay away from the tall wire fence that enclosed it. We used to like to whisper about it and shiver and feel scary. We had no idea where it was, and I’m sure it wasn’t only me that used to hope that in our wanderings over the farm we’d come upon the forbidden place unexpectedly some day. “Marion’s father was very much like Papa. We always ran and hid when we heard him coming, because when he saw us he always said·he was sure we’d been up to something. He never caught the boys swinging out of the hayloft on the grappling hook. And he never caught Marian and me down by the dam. “When we heard the older boys planning on going for a swim, we sneaked down the shortcut to the dam and set­

·1 tled high up in a tree before they arrived. Then we

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stifled giggles as we watched them shed their clothes and swim naked.” Even after Helen went home, they carried on their pretense of being boys in their letters to one another. They would write about imaginary things they did as boys. As they got older they accepted their femininity and their act as boys ended. Marion was only in her middle teens when she died of epilepsy, which was a heartbreak for Helen. It’s not hard to understand why Helen wished to es­ cape the girl’s role to which she was born. Leland was clearly his mother’s favorite, though through the years it was Helen wno helped out her mother, lending her moral 1 support when she needed it, and giving her part of her own meager income in later life. 1 The responsibility for Leland placed upon Helen often necessitated her having “to drag him around to play with her friends,” as she expressed it. 1Many times I’d stumble on him as he sat on the floor by the door waiting for me to come out of the bathroom!” How badly she treated him, ‘in her resentment, I only know from the frequent allusions Leland used to make to those years. It was clear that as children, they both .1 resented the arrangement. As adults they were never close and their conversation with each other often bristled with long held animosities, though they did see each other fairly often. I frequently felt that Leland took his resentment of his sister o t on me when I, as a child was vulnerable to .1 his sadt la. There was no physical aggression toward me, but it was his attitude and unkind criticisms that were

tion projected onto the next. Phil’s, Doug’s and my favorites of Mother’s stories of her childhood were about the earthquake of 1906, just four days before Helen was nine years old. Those, above all

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were the stories that never lost their excitement and in­

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