My first thirty years, p.28
My First Thirty Years, page 28
There was considerable hysteria too in the background of my mind and conduct with reference to the attitude of the President and Faculty, which reached its height in the conversations about the condition of my health. I was extremely afraid that some of the Normal School staff or other tenth-rate persons were wondering why I had to go to the Doctor for a complaint of the genital organs. Maybe they were thinking I was immoral; maybe they were gossiping merely out of malice. I marvel now that a woman twenty-seven years old could be so distressed and hurt by the thought of such gossip. I was possessed of a vain superstition with regard to sexual virtue which outweighed even my loathing for liars and petty tattlers. Then the attitude of my colleagues pained me too; during this dispute, most of the teachers of the staff, faculty members with whom I had been friendly, refused to bow to me in the street. Although from the day of my reelection they renewed their smiles and conversation. I understood them thoroughly, but the sheer asininity and insincerity of their conduct hurt me deeply… But there was more than hysteria, impudence, egotism, and vanity connected with the writing of the articles about school teaching. I really believed everything I wrote. It was all a “righteous cause”—the securing of adequate salaries, protests against the lack of free speech and press for teachers, and the teacher’s rights as a citizen and a member of the community—and I meant to stand by my guns until I had either convinced the enemy or been routed by them. I thought the articles were disinterested and courageous.
My work as Supervisor was absolutely the most pleasant I had ever had; I had liked my work in Texas too when I was rid of the bad boys who came to tease teacher and break up the school. But there were no bad boys at the Bellingham Training School; some of the children were a little dumb and stupid, but on the whole, there was much interesting material to work with. About fifty young teachers came under my supervision during the year. I met them for frequent conferences, marked their lesson plans, recommended professional books on the teaching of their subjects, and lectured to them once a week at a general conference. I gave them as much opportunity as possible to do as they pleased; besides I was glad to be rid of them; I knew they would like me for it. I had had enough interference from Principals, Superintendents, and Special Teachers in Chicago during the past five years to deter the most stupid from their mistakes. I had no desire to be like any schoolteacher I had ever heard of. I gave demonstration lessons only when I felt like it; it was glorious being able to leave the classroom as soon as you felt the slightest inclination towards boredom. The teachers under my supervision liked me; the President told me towards the end of the year that the teachers who had taught in my department were fond of me and proud of their work under my supervision. Of course, the student teachers were not fools; they knew we had a marking system and that they would each call on me sooner or later to recommend them for positions. I am unable to recall a case of friction with any of them, and very few instances of discipline from the children under my direction…
By the middle of the school year I had paid all my debts, including the balance of my endowment pledge to Simmons College which was made when I was sixteen years old. Although I had paid several installments for interest, it still amounted to forty dollars. At home, affairs were going better than they had ever gone before, financially. It looked as though my mother was going to own two houses very soon; then there was a small plot of land which her father had left her near Ranger, Texas. From time to time, we had been greatly excited over this quarter or eighth or so of a section of land as an oil well had been dug within a mile of it. I used to amuse my friends with this story, suggesting that before long I would be rolling in wealth.
My dream of going to Japan recurred many times during the year, and I began concrete steps for its realization. The passport department informed me that I required a birth certificate. I wired my mother who sent an affidavit as there were no official records.
Some explanation had to be made about my parents; they were not living together, or a similar point was raised, and I felt called upon to clarify the question; but I was so sheepish and stupid in my talk and attitude that the clerk finally dismissed it by informing me it was none of her business. Why didn’t I say directly, “My parents are divorced” and consign those who inquired further to the devil! No, I was still possessed with the idea that my parents’ divorcement was a disgrace. The same attitude seized me in making an affidavit connected with my passport in Seattle. And how I loathed myself for being such an idiot!
I made a reservation on the “Empress of Japan” which sailed from Vancouver, and made the inquiries and preparations which I required. Two large suitcases held the necessary clothes for the journey; the other things together with my papers and precious notes on the Normal School squabble were packed in my trunk. There was the revolver which I had taken to Chicago with me the first time; it had lain in my trunk nearly six years. It shamed me; once when I was at the boiling point about the school President’s conversation with the Doctor, I had a vision, a disgusting picture in my imagination of gun play. It was a terrible thing ever to have resolved to kill, for as soon as a thing stings one deeply it was so easy to be on the verge of resolving again. I was not the kind of person to be entrusted with a gun; I might lose my head and use it some time. The whole theory of guns, armaments in general, as a protection, was a fallacy; the idea was revolting.
At midday on the 23rd of June, 1920, the “Empress of Japan” left the harbor of Vancouver, ploughing through the northern course towards Japan. I was happy, as happy as a person of my temperament is capable of being. A secret wish bid in my heart; I hoped I was going to find someone…
* * *
2 A rod, a unit equal to 5.5 yards or the length of a standard canoe, was a commonly used measure of distance on the American prairie. The rod was particularly convenient for nineteenth century surveyors, homesteaders, and fence builders, as the eighty rods added up to exactly a quarter mile. Today, barbed wire still comes in eighty rod spools.
Further Reading
Almon, Bert. This Stubborn Self: Texas Autobiographies. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 2002.
Baym, Nina. “Eleven More Western Women Writers.” Resources for Literary Study 36 (2011): 62–82.
Beasley, Gertrude. “I Was One of Thirteen Poor White Trash.” Hearst International-Cosmopolitan 80 (January 1926): 90–2, 168.
“Euthenics: It’s Not What You Think.” New Yorker, July 21, 2015. https://newyorkerstateofmind.com/tag/gertrude-beasley/.
Fox, Jena Tesse. “A Different Woman.” August 16, 2005. https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-off-broadway/article/A-Different-Woman-20050816.
Graham, Don. “A Woman of Independent Means.” Texas Monthly, July 2000. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/a-woman-of-independent-means/.
———. Lone Star Literature: From the Red River to the Rio Grande. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.
Holland, Dick. “2003 Texas Book Festival Preview: King of Texas: An Interview with Don Graham, Editor of ‘Lone Star Literature’.” Austin Chronicle, November 7, 2003. https://www.austinchronicle.com/books/2003-11-07/185093/.
Marshik, Celia. “Sexual Violence as Founding Narrative: Edna Gertrude Beasley’s My First Thirty Years.” Feminist Modernist Studies 4 (2021): 71–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/24692921.2021.1880247.
McMurtry, Larry. Afterword. My First Thirty Years, by Edna Gertrude Beasley. Austin, TX: Book Club of Texas, 1989.
Mencken, H. L. “A Texas Schoolmarm.” Rev. of My First Thirty Years, by Edna Gertrude Beasley. American Mercury, January 1926: 123–5. Accessed May 4, 2012. http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1926jan-00123.
Specht, Mary Helen. “The Disappearance of Gertrude Beasley.” Texas Observer. Ed. Jonathan McNamara. May 17, 2011. Accessed April 23, 2012. http://www.texasobserver.org/culture/the-disappearance-of-gertrude-beasley.
Streitfeld, David. “Overlooked No More: Gertrude Beasley, Who Wrote an Uncompromising Memoir, Then Vanished.” New York Times, December 19, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/obituaries/gertrude-beasley-overlooked.html.
Taylor, Lonn. Turning the Pages of Texas. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2019.
About the Author
Edna Gertrude Beasley (1892–1955) was an American educator and journalist. After an impoverished and abusive West Texas childhood, Beasley earned a teaching degree from Simmons College in Abilene, Texas, and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. An ardent feminist and sex education advocate, she worked as a foreign correspondent in East Asia, the Soviet Union, and Western Europe. Her frank 1925 autobiography, My First Thirty Years, was published in Paris to some acclaim but ran afoul of U.S. and U.K. obscenity laws. Customs officials and Texas law enforcement confiscated most copies, and Beasley was deported from the U.K. in 1927. Within days of her return to the United States, she was committed to the Central Islip Psychiatric Center in New York, where she remained for the rest of her life. Beasley died of pancreatic cancer in 1955.
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Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years
