Astral Aviary

While I may make a small post from time to time, because of health issues and my need to focus on how to deal with this, I have decided to put the site on hold for a while. One of the health problems is particularly serious, and while I am not adverse to turning the site into a “health blog” (I’m unsure of the terminology here) — if I thought I could get some money out of it – the odds are there are plenty of such blogs out there already, so I won’t. As for the problem itself, let us say unless it is cured at some point in the future, not too many years hence I will be going on a “date with Barbara.” Which is about as coy a euphemism as I can come up with regarding the end result. Nevertheless, I’m not terribly concerned at the moment, just in more of an intellectual muddle than usual. I mean I am coming up to the end of the line anyway of what has turned out to be pretty much a wasted, useless life, but I still hope to have some fun between now and then.

No fantasy if more prevalent and powerful than the fantasy of a parallel world, one hidden from our senses, yet believed to be as real in its own strange way as our own. The fantasy states we live beside this invisible existence throughout our lives, most never knowing it nor having idea it is even there. But ,the fantasy hints, some of us can wonder, suspect, and imagine this hidden world. And a gifted few, artistically or spiritually, are granted the magical means/powers to perceive this alternate reality and can enter it to either escape the endless boredom of this one or flee its unrelenting terror. Thus the fantasy serves as both a refuge and a solace to our day-to-day existence and like its metaphysical equivalents, time travel and heaven, it is very old. Psychologically, it began with the dread of death and blossomed from there. The fantasy speaks to a need very deep in the human psyche and can either spark our creativity or our anguish, or both, but the longing is ever present from the first love loss in life – perhaps a pet, a friend, a relative, or a spouse – to the finality of our own demise. There are many, many such fantasies and I will not attempt to give even a short list.

At a young age, Barbara was seized by this fantasy of another world (one she called “Farksolia” – a word remarkably rich in acronyms, Frail Oaks being a personal favorite) that could be known only by her. What is even more remarkable is that she seemed also at that early age to have grasped the reality implicit in the longing to know this world – that not only was a special means of perception required: the gift of “minds to believe, and eyes to see.” But to actually cross over to it, presuming my interpretation of The House Without Windows is valid, the only mechanism was through one’s own death. Death was the “objective correlative” to this fantasy from its inception (and so it will remain until the last human being has succumbed.) As a fantasy, it would prove to be incredibly powerful to her. Strong and confident as Barbara was, she could never escape the power of Eepersip’s vision. There is no question that Barbara was drawn to death (or more accurately its living surrogate – sleep) in the final months of her life. The end of her marriage and the way that it was done was a psychological hammer blow from which she never recovered. This is clear regardless of how brave the words of her letters. Fighting to the end, she fought the depths of her despair and made repeated and determined efforts to right and restore things. She kept her head throughout; she handled it as well as anyone could have. But the longing-dread for the night doomed her.

Whatever the cause of the blow-up between her and her husband in winter 1938, a blow-up she alluded to and spoke about with her friends over a period of several months, it must have been a beaut. Having been on the receiving end of such a thing myself (as I think most married people have at least once), I can attest that while such psychological conflagrations leave no physical damage (usually), they deeply scar one’s soul. The older the couple the more likely they are to weather it, but it will not be forgotten, cannot be forgotten. For a young couple, particularly without the bond of children, it can well be terminal for the relationship.

Thus I am not entirely lacking in sympathy for her husband Nick, but I have come to dislike him over the course of my research. It is clear he made the decision to divorce her before she left for dance instruction at Mills College. This last blow-up he decided was the final straw, which implies there might well have been prior ones and that they were likely getting worse each time. What had drawn him initially to this 18-year old free spirit when he was an infatuated 25-year old had become but seven years later a nightmare, one he was no longer willing to endure. Massive changes in relationships of course happen frequently. I recall coming across a statistic that any man who marries at 25 has an 80% chance of getting divorced within a few years. Nick and Barbara Rogers almost made it. There were other factors. Simultaneously, he was unhappy with the direction of his career and he wanted a fresh start. It is obvious that he remained much closer to his own family, especially his brother, than the Follett’s, who must have struck him as strange. In sum, he wanted out and he wanted out badly.

Where I part company with Nick was his determination for revenge. The sending of the letters, three of them so she was certain to get at least one just as her dance classes completed and she was about to start her vacation visiting with her friends, was a master stroke of psychological cruelty. He likely planned it through spring ’38 and probably worked on the letter and the copies for some time as soon as she had left with her friends for California. He knew the story of how Barbara had received the farewell message from her father and the effect it had on her — Nick proceeded to replicate the circumstances of that abandonment as closely as he could. It worked. It broke her and from then on he had control of her for the first time in the marriage and he used that control to the full. I think he was actually surprised how effective his action had been, though whether it gave him any second thoughts is impossible to know. By the time he sent the letters, he was moving beyond the marriage with each passing day. Having never quit a marriage before, of course, he was likely unsure what to do when she returned (her letters strongly hint at that uncertainty in him), but it is equally clear the goal of divorce was never abandoned. He strung her along, but the pressure on Barbara never relented. I think her brother-in-law Howard felt sympathy for her, but he would never have crossed his brother on this, and likely tried to stay out of it – not an easy thing to do given the confines of the apartment the three would find themselves in near the end. Whether she turned to Howard at some point is impossible to say. By the time Barbara wrote the lost letter of 9/11/39, she was starting to unravel. There is a sense that her husband was withdrawing ever deeper into himself. He had no intention of forgiving her; both were becoming strangers to each other. Possibly he had even come to hate her. He would soon be acting as if he did and Barbara must have felt that hatred each night she hit the sleeping “dope.”

Into Doubt and Uncertainty

When I opened the final packet dealing with her disappearance, I was in for the deepest shock of all: most of the letters were gone. From the time that her mother first found out about Barbara’s disappearance to the letter that opens the pack (2/8/49), a period of just over nine years had passed. All my hopes for finding the initial correspondence with Nick, his brother, and possibly even Dr. Dunlop vanished at once. What was there was damning enough, as we shall see, but why everything prior was gone I have no idea. Who could have removed the letters, and why? There is something very odd about this and the more I went through the packet (again I had the library check to confirm nothing had been misfiled), the more persuaded I became that there was much more to the story than McCurdy stated.

So where do I start? The packet starts out with a letter to Mr. Andrew Burt and it is a disappointmnet. The gist of it was that Mr. Burt could barely remember Barbara from a time about 15 years prior. Then there is another letter, over three and half years later. This time it is to Nick, reminding him he had promised to return those letters of Barbara he still had in his possession. The letter is unsigned so I do not know who sent it, though I have a guess. The theme of the letter, thought friendly, was that Nick had not been forthcoming in any aspect, which was the theme throughout the packet.

Starting in November (11/11/52) things change. There is a flurry of letters from Mrs. Follett regarding the case. Why after well over a decade of inactivity she is finally roused to action, is unclear. Mrs. Follett states in a letter to the Boston police: “The problem of Barbara Rogers’ disappearance from the Boston area was left to her husband.” There is a strong sense she is beginning to realize that was a huge mistake. In fairness to her, everyone else seemed to have trusted him as well. No private detectives were ever hired (admittedly not a minor expense, then or now, and the Follett’s were always short on cash). The police investigation itself seemed half-hearted at best. Precious time was lost and the case grew cold.

Here is the money quote from that letter: “ . . . I trusted Mr. Rogers to keep me informed of any developments that transpired through his own personal efforts and through those of the police. I was led to believe that the police of both Boston and Brookline had been informed of the circumstances. Only rarely, perhaps two or three times did I receive any word from Mr. Rogers, always to the same effect – that my daughter was still missing. No details concerning his efforts or those of the police were mentioned. . . . Because of the long silences without news of any sort, my trust in Mr. Rogers had been changing, by degrees, into doubt and uncertainty.”

In the next letter we learn that the Brookline missing persons alert was not sent out until 4/22/40, four and half months after her disappearance (it’s not clear when Mrs. Follett contacted the Federal Bureau of missing persons). That is why I could find nothing in the Brookline paper for December. Rogers made the initial request two weeks after Barbara vanished, but asked it not be made public until 4/22. Also on December 21/22, at the request of the Brookline Police Department, he went to Morgue on Charles Street in Boston. Not surprisingly, no identification took place.

4/22/40 was, in fact, the last date Rogers ever communicated with the Brookline Police Department. The information “went out to 8 states,” but of course, nothing was heard back. If he did look for his missing wife, it does not appear he looked very hard. As the letters continue, there is an understandable sense of increasing frustration and anger in Mrs. Follett.

Mrs. Follett then makes an appeal (thirteen years to the day of Barbara’s disappearance) to the Social Security Administration, trying to see if there are any records of Barbara but even in those days Social Security refuses to help, citing the equivalent of privacy concerns. I can only imagine what kind of response you would be given today if you were to attempt to mine historical data out of them. Note: If anyone knows if such is possible or has tried it, I would be interested in hearing from you.

The final letter, 3/11/53, is perhaps the most dramatic of all. Here we learn that while Nick has been in contact with Sabra (who apparently served as the go-between the two families), he still refuses to see Mrs. Follett: “All this silence on your part almost looks as if you had something to hide concerning Barbara’s disappearance.” She informs him of her efforts over the past few months: “You cannot believe I shall sit idle during my last few years and not make whatever effort I can to find our whether she is alive or dead . . .” She concludes: “Kindness to others is often a rewarding experience to ourselves.”

To Die Alone

I had originally intended to call this series To Die Alone instead of A Haunting Spirit, because it was that sad vision of her fate that I had come to accept as the most likely end of her life. But I found the original title so gloomy and depressing even I couldn’t go forward with it. But in closing my thoughts on her life, it makes sense to use it. Concerning my original speculations, and comparing them with what I know now, in some ways my conclusions have not changed. I still believe Barbara died the night of December 7, 1939, and that the “sleep dope” was a contributing factor, perhaps the crucial factor. If my belief is correct, then she was taking barbiturates in increasing quantities along with alcohol, to attain the sleep that was increasing denied her. The strong possibility of an overdose cannot be denied. As a consequence and as already noted, I no longer believe she walked out of the apartment that night of December 7, 1939. The haunting image of her locking the door behind her as she walks slowly out into the cold night of a world going mad is touching but wrong. There are just too many reasons not to believe it. She did not walk out of the apartment, but walked into the “house without windows” and from there to Farksolia for the first and last time.

Since I have gone this far with my speculations, why stop now? I want to bring them to a conclusion, one that I think is reasonable, though of course nothing here can be deemed proof. Almost all of the people involved are dead and the extant records are few but a pattern has emerged.

Conclusion 3: I do not believe she committed suicide. I am not accusing anyone of murder. Moreover, callousness and psychological cruelty are not crimes. What I believe is that on the morning of December 8, at least two and possibly three people knew exactly what had happened to Barbara Follett: her husband, her brother-in-law, and possibly Dr. Dunlop. I absolve Dunlop of responsibility for her death because what he was prescribing was within the scope of known medical knowledge of the day. It would be another two generations before the dangers or his prescription were fully realized. Her death was thus accidental, the result of an overdose by someone desperate for sleep, a story common then as it is today. And to avoid scandal and embarrassment, her body was disposed, how and where unknown.

With Nick still present in her life, it was the night that was her terror. During the day, she was able to hold herself together, confident and rational, but in the dark silence of the evening there was no where for her to go. She was left to her own devices to attain the sleep that was “oblivion.” And it was sleep she needed and desired more than anything else.

What bothers me most about this are the missing letters, letters that might have given additional clues. The mere fact that these letters are missing, and likely gone forever, suggests as much. Consider that from August 28^th to the day of her vanishing, she wrote only two letters and one of them is missing.

Supposition 3: Nick himself destroyed some of the letters. It is also possible more than one person had a hand in destroying some of them.

* * *

So there we have it. Barbara the human being in her unbearably sad, lonely death replaces Barbara the legend. I still have hope that additional sources of information might be found (perhaps the letters of Barbara’s closest friend, Alice D. Russell), which would help clarify some aspects of Barbara’s last days. It is possible that someone even now might recall a whispered conversation from long ago. There might be a sealed confession somewhere, people might remember things that struck them as odd at the time, or there is a tradition of a family secret. But I certainly have taken this as far as I can. I like to think my efforts have been appreciated, but I have my doubts. I wonder now were I to attend a Follett family gathering, not terribly likely but go with me on this, would it be unwise for me or anyone for that matter to bring up the topic of Barbara? Old wounds and hurts die hard indeed, family hurts being all but immortal. And lord help me, I imagine, were I ever to show up at a Rogers’s family gathering. Yet, having come to dislike Nick Rogers as much as I have, even over a span of nearly 70 years, I confess it is far more likely there is nothing here anyone would ever fret over. As for his brother Howard and Dr. Gibson, I can’t say I think very much of them either, but who now would possibly care?

In the end I feel sorry for almost all concerned, but particularly Mrs. Follett, who suffered increasingly in her life, the loss of Barbara being the greatest tragedy of all. And, of course, my deepest sorrow is for Barbara. What a sad, empty end to such a magnificently promising beginning. It shouldn’t have been that way, but “should” and “fair” are merely invented concepts which people sometimes try to implement in human institutions — only to do so with typically disastrous results. I could say that Barbara’s life and death could serve as a warning, or a “caution,” the word Mrs. Follett preferred, but all history is a series of warnings and as far as I know, none of them have ever been heeded, even when understood. There is no need for any more. Let there be an end to warnings and let there henceforth be only promises to do better, if it is not too late.

* * *

His Comely Mug

It was the first letter of the year (“1938-39”), dated October 4, 1938. It was in one of the packets I had ordered from the library. Because of that simple fact, again there was a strong sense that letters were missing and presumably destroyed. In this letter to her writer friend Alice (“A.D.R”) Russell, Barbara wrote about her husband appearing in the September 12, 1938 issue of Life magazine. The letter shows Barbara was in an exuberant mood. There are no clouds on the horizon, no sense at all of a gathering storm. She writes: “By the way, did you see his comely mug in Life … in connection with the article on Polaroid? And did you recognize him? (The young man whose rear view shows in the picture above is Nick’s brother Howard.)” She would buy several copies of the magazine to give to friends and relatives.

This is an important point to keep in mind. Barbara had an extended network of family, including a half-sister because of her father’s remarriage, and friends. These people were in contact with her on and off right up to the end. She was seldom alone, isolated, or in cut off from this world. 1938, as near as can be determined, was in her life a comfortable time. Nothing intruded. She obviously liked her husband, that comes through strongly in the letters, but she as not beholden to him and she had her own life and interests. And it appeared she liked Howard, her brother-in-law.

So what about that article on Polaroid? Since there are no limits to what I will go through to research a piece for my readers, I went on-line (I am getting the hang of it), and ordered a copy of that issue of Life. This was, the site assured me, the real deal: a genuine issue of the magazine, a true relic, not some lame photocopy facsimile. Since one of the key points of this piece is the absolute requirement of using original documents as far as is possible, this was as close as I could get to just such a thing. The price of the issue in 1938, btw, was a lousy 10 cents. It cost me 30 bucks. But it was worth it, I think. I was in for a treat.

Getting a real copy of that magazine proved to be, psychologically, a mixed blessing. It was like being presented with a shiny new time machine, the dream of the ages, all sparkling circuits and chrome controls, but with the unfortunate feature that it would only take you to a time and place you really did not want to go. It was like a siege perilous that sent you to a world least suited to whoever you were. I must confess at this point I am old enough to remember Life magazine when it was being published as a weekly periodical and even at that tender age I found something terribly creepy about it. Maybe it was the way they sucked up to power (der Furher was a favorite in the thirties, such a charming cad he was, what a card!), or their smugness about their photography – their incredibly brilliant photographers had given you a picture of something and that was all you would ever need to know. Or maybe it was their clueless moralizing, or their fascination, for example, with the KKK (“The costume-wearers on this page are a small and mischievous remnant of the once mighty Ku Klux Klan. The Klan rides but seldom now . . .” p. 22). Crikey (once again I feel compelled to assure the reader I am not making this stuff up). This is a line that Life would repeat for many years, decades in fact. The truth was they loved how photogenic (from their POV) the Klan was. The Klan was like a cheap celebrity you grabbed when no one else was available, kind of the Britney of the day. The burning “gasoline-soaked cross” (as if readers could never have figured that detail out for themselves) of the “mischievous” attracted them like something attracts flies.

Maybe it was just the way they lumped everything together, there being no gradations: Fascist Fuhrer or Fall Fashion, it all had the same moral weight, the same depth and urgency. Or it might have been the ads. Let’s never forget the ads. On the back of the issue is a full-color cartoon of sorts advertisement for the cigarette brand Camels (“CAMELS AGREE WITH ME,” it yells at you at the bottom of the page). It has to seen to be believed, and even then you won’t believe it. Something about how smoking Camels will help you (the male journalist) catch the eye of the fetching (female) circus performer. They help calm her nerves, you see, (the cigarettes, not journalists) and if you’re a smoker of the noxious weed yourself, you would demonstrate to her at once how astonishingly cool and understanding you were.

People loved this publication. It was not a disease as such, but it came terribly close. Certainly it was a grim symptom of something terminal. Glancing through it, one realizes sadly it is little wonder our ancestors stumbled blindly into the most appalling war in human history. It was also, I believe, an accurate reflection of Barbara’s view of the world. There is no poignant indication in her letters that she was in any way disturbed by the coming war – she gives no notice to anything happening outside her world. Quoting McCurdy: “. . . the threatening postures of Hitler in Europe, which might conceivably have affected the young woman she then was . . .” Not buying it. Politics was well outside of her range of interest, except for one brief romantic fling as a teenager, from the beginning of her life until the end. She was sharp, she was deep, and she was never resigned. She had long since reconciled herself to her judgment on humanity and there was nothing that ever caused her to reconsider.

* * *

Finally, it might also have been the insipid ain’t-science-grand type articles, an inane feature to this day of popular news magazines with no understanding of science (e.g. Scientific American). In this instance, the article featured Barbara’s husband, Mr. Nickerson Rogers (pp. 38-39), and that is what truly makes it worth noting, at least according to Barbara. No doubt she is right. Sadly, the picture of her husband is not a good one. It is likely he is squinting before a bright light as he dourly demonstrates, holding one large circular filter (a good foot in diameter) in each hand. This is Polaroid’s incredible device for polarizing light. He was a company technician-salesman at the time and he does not appear to be altogether happy with his latest assignment. The final shot shows him twisting both filters at just the right angle to result in a wedge of completely blocked light: there result in appearance is a huge split in his head, as if cleaved by an ax. But Barbara, as noted, was quite proud that he had appeared in a national news publication.

It’s not that love is blind, but it does have a blinding effect.

* * *

A Stick of Dynamite

In the November letter, she also comments on receiving A.D.R.’s new book. She has a good “chuckle” over it because it “. . . made me think very definitely indeed of a certain situation in California some years ago, especially when everybody got flurried and flustered, etc. I think that consciously or unconsciously you must have been harking back to that.” For reasons which are probably obvious by now, this passage is not quoted in Barbara.

The frequency of the letters then drops markedly – there is nothing between November ‘38 and July ’39, but this time at least there is a plausible reason. Barbara stopped writing, because she was too busy practicing with her dance group in preparation for summer classes at Mills College, California. There was also something else: there had been a blow-up between her and her husband (“I had a bad spell. Made a mess of things.”) It happened sometime around the end of ’38, cause or causes unknown. There are no details, but it was a topic of conversation for some time. Nevertheless, she is confident she can make up for it, but it remained persistently in the background. Her husband had a new job and is apparently happy with it which is a great relief to her. Her plans for dance instruction at Mills College are a great success (“I am loving it”). The hard work, the long practice sessions through the winter months of her “Boston Group” have paid off. She is with several of the “big shots” of dance, she tells her friend. It is a heady, happy experience.

In short, there is no indication anywhere that things are about to go decidedly wrong. She writes that she plans to meet with A.D.R. and other California friends as soon as the summer school completes, which is August 11. In fact, as the Summer School ends in 1939, she has good news. In the letter of August 6 she reveals that while she has “acquired a beautiful charley horse,” happily this will enable her to leave the campus even earlier.

Sometime around August 12^th, give or take a day, and apparently while still at Mills recuperating, (her husband sent out three copies it appears of the bombshell letter, all to different locations where Barbara might be, including even one to A.D.R. just to make sure his wife got it), she received the letter from her husband. In essence, he stated he had found someone else and the marriage was over. It was that brutal and that sudden. In one blow, it shattered her plans, her illusion of happiness, and her life.

August 15^th she was back in Boston. The nightmare had begun. Upon her return to the apartment, no one was around. Frantically, she called everyone she could think of, but learned nothing except that he was in New York, at a hotel where he could not be contacted. Finally, she reaches her “very good friend,” Dr. Charlie Dunlop who “already knew a little of the situation from last spring.”

Here is an excerpt of the letter from August 17 (a letter not referenced in Barbara) which gives a much better description of what happened on her return: “He came right over to see me, bringing (a) three large, juicy and delectable hamburgers; (b) a bottle of whiskey; (c) some sleeping dope. Well, the combination of these things, plus a good talk with him, just fixed me up. I slept well, then woke up yesterday quite relaxed and almost confident and hopeful – a little scared still, of course, a little strained, but hopeful. I spent the day very slowly and quickly doing domestic things, and time passed fairly quickly. I read and listened to the radio, and got to sleep last night under my own power without benefit of dope.” [Emphasis added.]

But from the letter of August 22, just five days later [quoted at length in Barbara) things are not so hopeful. Note: “S.”is Nickerson (“Nick”) Rogers. Her guilt has returned in force (“But it’s really my fault. I had it coming to me, I know.”) The following day, her brother-in-law Howard called, saying he would come over to have supper with her that night. That must have been some conversation: sorry about my brother dumping you. He gets like that sometimes, you know. I’m sure in a few months we’ll all look back on this and laugh . . .

Nick himself would be showing up around the same time, she was assured. He actually shows up around noon, though it appears the following day. The return of her husband does not help matters. It only makes them worse.

Quoted in Barbara: “I don’t know whether I told you he [i.e. Doctor Dunlop] gave me some sleeping stuff. Ever since S. got back I‘ve had to take it every night.” [Emphasis added.]

As the weeks progress, Barbara is still hopeful, but it is clear she is starting to catch on. Nick at one point has her search for a new apartment, one large enough for his brother to stay as he will be getting married in January and needs a place in the interim. Nick is also urging her to find work that she will be happy at (she begins to realize this might just be a way to ease her out of his life.) And while there is no evidence of the other woman, a point Barbara and at least one friend grasps, she wills herself to act as if her rival does indeed exist. (Her husband would in fact remarry in almost four years, which gives some credence to the notion there was no one waiting breathlessly for him.)

In this new apartment, we now have the following: a doctor supplying sleeping “dope” (I’m standing by my guess of barbiturates and one suspects in significant, i.e. increasingly dangerous, quantities) as well as liquor (that’s swift thinking, doc.) Moreover, we have a cast off wife, an indifferent husband, and a brother-in-law hanging around waiting to be married in the near future, with perhaps his fiancé dropping by from time to time as well.

“On the surface, things are terribly, terribly calm, and wrong — just as wrong as they can be.” Barbara, in her last letter, 11/4/39. But her work and her dancing continue — right up until Christmas is the plan.

Conclusion #2: you don’t have to be Tennessee Williams to know this is an explosive situation. To gauge how explosive it is, it would help to have the letter of September 11, 1939, the next to the last she wrote (she alludes to it in that final letter). But that letter too is missing and one has to presume destroyed. With no additional information forthcoming, one simply has to take the situation as a given. And by doing so, I conclude, I find it impossible to believe any longer that “on Thursday evening, December 7, 1939 in the early evening, Barbara walked out of her Brookline, apartment . . . [with] about thirty dollars . . . and the shorthand notes she had taken during the day.” And I find it quite odd that anyone at the time did. Not astonishing, just very odd.

Something indeed happened around that day and time, but walking out into the cold Boston night with the equivalent of a few hundred dollars cash was not it.

We will begin with this item, quoted from the Boston Globe column “ASK THE GLOBE,” June 6, 1994. I came across this gem when I was doing research for this follow-up piece. It is worth quoting — for the most part — though not for any reason the Boston Globe would appreciate, I’m sure:

Q. What ever happened to the child prodigy writer Barbara Newhall Follett? My mother read me the book she wrote when she was 11 years old . . . called “The House without Windows.” I understand that when Barbara grew up in Brookline, she disappeared one day. Did she ever return?

R. “Apparently not. A brilliant writer who had educated at home, Barbara was deeply unhappy. At the age of 16, she ran away from her parents [sic] home in Pasadena, Calif., and when tracked by detectices [sic] to a San Francisco hotel, tried to kill herself by jumping out a window. Her parents later separated and Barbara’s own early marriage foundered. Living in Brookline, she found work as a secretary and hated it. She was last seen on Dec. 7, 1939, leaving her Brookline apartment with $30 and a shorthand pad.]

We will stop there. So few statements, so many errors. To begin: Barbara did not grow up in Brookline (the questioner’s error, granted, but it should have been corrected by Mr. Answers). It was not her parents’ home that she ran away from. She was still 15. Her father’s leaving the family (when she was age 12) was traumatic, but Barbara was not by nature a “deeply unhappy” person. She recovered; she fought for her happiness throughout her life. Her letters show her to be a fully alive, strong and balanced individual, with a vibrant sense of humor – she never seemed, though I suppose interpretations could differ, to take herself that seriously. She was a romantic, exuberant, but never manic. As revealed by her letters, her reactions were proportionate and appropriate to the circumstances she found herself in, and she displayed shrewdness right up to the end.

As for the “jumping out a window” bit, from the two contemporary newspaper accounts I found (unfortunately, the only sources I have, but at least there are two), it’s not documented that any such thing happened so I cannot confirm it. Neither the L.A. Times nor the Hartford Courant mention the supposed suicide attempt. It is possible, though how the Boston Globe got its information I do not know, that she tried to escape out the window, not jump. She was not afraid of heights and would certainly given her feelings at the time have found such recourse worth a try.

Moving right along, her parents had already been separated for three years. She did not “hate” working as a secretary (“stenographer”); that was how she planned to support herself should her running away have been successful and she worked in the field for many years. Later, she decided that being a business woman was not for her. Understandably, she much preferred artistic expression, but she was fully and maturely aware of the realities of her and her husband’s economic situation. Her marriage was not that “early” (she married at age 20, after an engagement of two years, hardly unusual in those days.)

One more example why one shouldn’t trust newspapers, and certainly not any dippy “Ask Mr. Answers”-type columns.

But since it refers specifically to the incident that persuaded me to write this review of her life, as we move beyond McCurdy in search of her life, I felt there was no harm in starting with it, as in its own twisted way, the item does give some context to the flight from Pasadena, Calif., which is not in Barbara. Here is the story to the best I can reconstruct it.

One year after the divorce (though legal haggling over money would continue on and off for some time), Barbara got the idea for what would become an almost two-year, almost around the world cruise. Her mother agreed, reluctantly at first, but soon with mounting enthusiasm. It would become an odyssey that Mrs. Follett would parley into two books (Magic Portholes and Stars to Steer By). The voyage would take the pair to the Caribbean and then to the Pacific islands, Hawaii, to the West Coast and finally back to New York. It was on the return voyage from Hawaii on board the schooner Vigilant that she met her first of two great loves: second-mate E. Anderson (the mysterious “A.” of the book — the Folletts seem to have an annoying preference for the use of initials), whom I have still not been able to find anything about, including his full first name.

Given their limited monetary resources, the plan was to support themselves on the whole of the voyage by freelance work, editing and writing essentially. Though I don’t recommend trying it, it was not a bad idea at the time. Overall the experience would become a wonderful adventure for them both, and one well worth immersing oneself into for those into “vanished times and places” genre of travel literature. But for our purposes, the main result of the voyage was that for two years Barbara would experience near total freedom. This would serve to amplify her already strong tendencies in that direction. At age fifteen, she viewed herself with justification as far more adult than child.

In sum, it got their minds off the divorce and their problems (as two-year ocean cruises tend to do). Unfortunately, it left them both nearly broke (as two-year ocean cruises tend to do). Cash shortage is a frequent theme in Barbara’s letters and seems to be something of a family curse. All in all, however, the idea worked and was reasonably well executed.

But when Barbara and her mother arrived on the West Coast from Hawaii (late July. 1929), their financial situation was dire. According to the newspaper accounts, two “wealthy friends” (recall: the Great Depression had not yet started), described as “elderly women engaged in scientific research,” Mrs. A. Brown of Concord Mass. and Miss Mildred Kennedy of Boston had to come to their rescue. It appears they travelled cross-country to Pasadena to clear up the mess. A plan was worked out among the adults: Mrs. Follett would return to Hawaii to work and replenish the Follett’s cash so to complete the journey home, and Barbara would be entrusted in the care of Dr. Ture Schultz of Pasedena. Starting that fall, she would be enrolled “as a student in Pasadena Junior College.” It would be the end of her absolute freedom, but it must have made perfect sense at the time to Mrs. Follett. It probably made even more sense to Brown and Kennedy who may well have been appalled by Barbara’s tomboyish bordering on sailor ways. It was long past the time for her daughter to get serious about school work, to prepare for adulthood and becoming a mature young lady. So forth and so on.

Barbara had other ideas and soon had a plan of her own.

Quoting again from the L. A. Times (the headline blazes: CHILD WRITER IN REVOLT), Barbara stated she “found the arrangement ‘unbearable.’ The situation was ‘poisonous.’ She felt ‘suppressed, crushed, and almost insane’ at the curtailment of her freedom. So she ran away to San Francisco.”

She was over thirty years ahead of her time.

Concluding the interview: “’I am an expert typist,’ she said. ‘I have used a typewriter since I was 4 years of age. I corrected the galley proofs of my own books. I have lived all my life with scholarly, well-informed, cultured people. Though I am only 15 and inexperienced in the business world, I am better equipped than most who enter it and succeed.’ No doubt about that.

Barbara explained: “ . . . the plans that had been made for me. I did not want to enter college and nor live the standardized existence. I have never been to school in my life. Perhaps I might like it – I do not know. But this I know: I do not want to like it.” Emphasis added. As a statement, it is a brilliant summary of teenage rebellion. I wish I could have said it at age 15.

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you

Having left poor Dr. Schultz a “note of explanation,” she fled by “stage” no less, that would lead to her (quoting the L.A. Times writer Floyd J. Healy) “beating the wings of her young aspirations against the bars hedging the freedom of youth . . .” (you can’t make this stuff up, folks). As is frequently the case in such winged aspirations, Barbara soon found herself in a Juvenile Detention Home. It was, she said, “a sordid, humiliating experience . . . Four little girls in their blue uniforms in their cages next to mine. Looking through the bars, one of them even tried to wink at me.”

Soon Mrs. A. Brown and Miss Mildred Kennedy showed up to retrieve her and that is when matters blew to the full. The “young literary genius protested to such effect . . . ,” as one can well-imagine, that the court was duly impressed. Barbara was not turned over to her would-be elderly guardians and there the newspaper accounts, those I could find anyway, abruptly end. As is so typical of newspapers, then and now, just when the “story” gets interesting, it is dropped.

So what happened next? Trying to piece together the story was not easy, but in broad outline, and if I am wrong given the style and speed of internet discourse, I am certain to be corrected, I believe this is what happened. Her mother was in Hawaii or heading there, and since there was no way to reach her and even if they could no way for her to readily return, giving up Mrs. Brown and Miss Kennedy did the only thing they could do before returning home: contact Barbara’s father. Now Wilson Follett has gotten some bad press and certainly does not come across altogether sympathetic in Barbara, but he seems to have come through fine for Barbara on this one. He contacted the Russell family, also in Pasadena, whose three daughters (Alice, Elizabeth, and Phoebe) were much closer to Barbara’s age and were writers/artists in their own right (how he came to know them is unclear, but it is possible he had dealt with Alice as an editor.) The family agreed to take in Barbara until her mother returned. All talk of schooling was dropped. This arrangement appears to have worked out much better. Alice D. Russell was I gather a modestly popular writer of the time and she and Barbara hit it off perfectly. In fact, it is clear Barbara took to the whole family. There is even a friendly letter from Barbara to Mr. Russell in the collection. Alice (always referred to as “A.D.R” in Barbara’s letters) would in fact become her closest friend and correspondent until Barbara’s disappearance ten years later.

As far as the Pasadena business is concerned, alls well that ends well, one supposes.

* * *

What are we to make of this? It’s a remarkable incident that may or may not shed light on Barbara’s later vanishing. It leaves open the possibility that in 1939, like she did in 1929, she fled a miserable situation to find freedom and happiness once more. Yet the circumstances were hardly the same and the fact that there is no documentation of the eight month period that encompasses what I came to call the “Pasadena Adventure” has an ominous feel to it. What was really going on? Why was none of this, which could have been so illuminated Barbara’s psychology, in the book? It would have been a perfect segue for McCurdy’s speculations about her disappearance at the end of Barbara, but there is nothing.

At the very least, where did the letters go? Why the cover-up, if you will? It’s all speculation at this point but it shows how much of Barbara’s life is murky and how far the mystery extends before and after her disappearance.

Supposition #2: I can only guess that what is missing showed Barbara in an unflattering light, at least from the POV of her mother who is I fear a suspect in the letters disappearance, not just a person of interest, and Mrs. Follett decided that that no one should ever know of these letters. The problem is that regardless of the nobility of her desire to protect Barbara’s legacy, vital contextual information was lost when these letters were destroyed. The grim irony of this is that there is no question that is the last thing that Mrs. Follett would have wanted, but there it is.

The letters of Alice D. Russell might shed light on this, but for now they too are equally lost.

This protectiveness, if that is what it is, is not without precedent, i.e. where the literary executors of an estate have felt it advisable to destroy some or all letters or even the entire works of an author, sometimes in deference to their wishes, sometimes one can only assume by malicious whim. I personally dislike intensely the destruction of any aspect of a writer’s work or heritage for whatever reason and I loath with every atom of my being the people who do such things. The problem is once the process starts, where does it end? A letter here, a manuscript there, and pretty soon you are left with what only be described as the Cliff’s Notes of a person’s life. I realize a lot of this material may be unpleasant and not for the squeamish, and should be handled with more sensitivity than most writers/scholars bring to the task, but that is life. It bears repeating: one man’s trivial and distasteful gossip is another man’s crucial and human context. If we can’t handle that trade-off, then we risk turning all history into fantasy. For what is history, if not a vast network of interlocking biographies?

A Personal Statement

Today it is possible for a person to go through college learning almost no history, or history slanted so decidedly by one perspective, that the student is better off learning none of it. This is the monumental tragedy of our time, a guarantee for disaster, an epitaph for all our freedoms and desires. We are presented now, today — this is not a warning of things that might happen — with entire generations, based on the inane conversations at work I must endure and what passes for political and social commentary that I can barely bring myself to read, who know nothing of life beyond their own dreary misadventures, if that, and what trash television pours into their empty little skulls. It’s not that these people don’t try. They don’t even know they have to try or if they did how to try. We are becoming not just a nation, but an entire world, of zombies.

I’m off my soapbox. Now we jump forward to Fall, 1938.

. . . Or a haunting spirit of the night.

Thou art a picture, on a mass of soft, translucent green

Jet black, against the starry, deep blue sky,

And from the blackness shine forth those fiery eyes,

Though fillest the spirit of man with haunting, deadly fear,

And “When thou diest, though diest alone!”

– B.N.F., from her poem Immanela

Introduction

Of the pieces that have appeared on this site, none have captured the attention of readers more than my sprawling, experimental, and not altogether focused series of the life of Barbara Newhall Follett, the young literary genius who vanished the evening of December 7, 1939 just three months shy of her 26^th birthday. I received encouragement, advice, and criticism, all of which are gratifying. They were in fact more than I could have hoped for. Though the intent of the series was both to work out my thoughts regarding her life (I really was at the stage I wanted to put it behind me) and how it had affected my life, along with a plea that her literary legacy be preserved so the story not be forgotten again, it seemed to have accomplished something more: reawakened the feelings, positive and negative, regarding the tale for those who have been haunted by it since they first encountered it, typically through McCurdy’s book, Barbara. I admit to having a vague hope that I would be able to communicate my feelings to find kindred spirits if you will, and to the extent I was able to do so, I believe the series accomplished its purposes. Once the series was completed, it was certainly not my intent to do anything more beyond that – though any items of interest that might fall my way I promised to share. But attempting to “solve” the mystery? No. The thought of rummaging through Barbara’s letters (should I ever locate them) for telling or salacious details would have filled me with horror. The letters were for historical and literary value only. Re-opening the case, investigating the mystery was simply out of the question. For reasons of both time not to mention the death of almost all those who had been directly affected by the story, it was not to be. But over the months, it became clear to me that Barbara’s mystery still cast a spell. The haunting, if you will, continued and it turned out that it was not so easy after all for me to close the book on her and move on.

So I write this follow up piece reluctantly, but write it nevertheless. I have done to an extent what I had no desire to do. Thanks to some crucial information provided by one correspondent and inspiration provided by the others, I was able to locate her letters and the door was now open for me to go rummaging through them to my heart’s content. All that I can say in my defense is that I am by temperament a cautious individual and am hesitant to draw conclusions without strong evidence. But what I did turn up was shocking enough, at least to me, so reluctant as I was, I would write a follow-up series. By the end of last year, in fact, I realized I had to give it a try.

In brief, since reviewing her letters of 1929-30 and 1938-39 (plus the post-disappearance letters of her mother, Helen Follett), I have come to drastically revise many of my earlier conclusions and opinions. No doubt other surprises await, should I wish to pursue them (to be determined), but what I found was troubling enough. The matter, in other words, is now at the stage where the risk is justified. I regret if I upset people or frustrate them by what I have done. It was certainly not my intent. Nevertheless, I will tell what I know and what I don’t and what I conclude. Where there are areas of uncertainty, and there are many, I will point them out as well. You the reader can take from there

Note: For those of you who are curious, I am willing to discuss the matter via e-mail. However, while I will report on what I have found in the future, I believe this series will in fact close the book, if for no other reason that I have probably taken it as far as I can. Without help, there is really little more I can do.

* * *

The Casper Hauser of Our Time

I have to admit I am still getting the hang of this new-fangled Internet thingy, so while it is embarrassing to admit, I really have no choice but to do so: I had in my previous series, in my ignorance, overlooked some obvious sources of information. Well, I said I would never pretend to know more than I do.

The original ground rules for writing the first Barbara series was to rely exclusively on McCurdy’s book. That would be my only source of information and I stuck with it. There was nothing else I had access to. It did occur to me from time to time as I was preparing the first series that McCurdy’s wonderful book while the only source might not be a perfect one. Nevertheless, I trusted and respected the author and had no reason at the time to question any of it. Let me be blunt on this. I admire the heck out of McCurdy and what he must have gone through those five years to bring the book to fruition is nothing short of amazing (more on that later). But as the warning goes, i.e. to beware the man with one book, one should be also be worried about the historian (amateur historian in my case) with only one source. Especially since that source is not the original documents.

Let me be clear about this need for access to the original documents, since it is vital in what is to come. Henry Ford once said that history was bunk. I think he was on to something. But allow me to be more positive: if you like reading history and want some real excitement in your life — and who doesn’t? — go to the source documents and uncover the “history-in-the-raw” as I like to call it. I guarantee, the source documents will never cease to astonish you. They may even gross you out (a lot gets edited out before the polished scholarly work is published, believe me), but you won’t be bored.

Now, it has been said that anyone’s life told in sufficient detail is shocking. Raw history, versus “pasteurized history,” will confirm that truth. A couple of examples: “Mormonism: Shadow or Reality,” a phone-book sized collection of original documents on the founding of the Mormon Church, and “Blacklisted by History” which examines the career of Senator McCarthy (1946 -1954), again using only the original source documents. The results in both cases I found to be extraordinary and quite unsettling. Should you read either (both can be found on Amazon.com), you will be left thoroughly distrustful of the established histories, so much so that I believe, as I myself have done, you will restrict yourself to the very few historians you admire, and even then you will be suspicious. You might even be tempted to stop reading history altogether. “The law is ‘a ass,” one Dickensonian character said. He might well have been talking about most history.

Once I knew where to locate Barbara’s source documents, the only hope I had for getting nearer the truth, the quest would not be denied. As noted, one of my correspondents had informed me that he knew their location, the library where the letters were stored. This was the entire 2000 page collection of her writings, catalogued, if not in excessive detail, and armed with that knowledge it turned out to be remarkably easy to get copies of the letters I wanted. I couldn’t believe my luck. Recall – these would have been the only sources of information, other than interviews with Mrs. Follett that McCurdy had access too.

[Certainly if he had interviewed Barbara’s father, he never mentioned it, and given the degree of the Follett family tensions, which continue to this day, I highly doubt that he did. Similarly, any request to interview her former husband would also have been turned down flat. But fascinating stuff turned up regardless. My correspondent had also pointed to a revealing incident that took place in late 1929, when Barbara while in California, ran away from her guardian at the time, determined at age 15 to avoid college and to live her own life.

One cannot help but be sympathetic to Barbara at every stage in her life.

The incident is not in the book, though it is to be found in contemporary newspaper accounts – it appears she was a minor celebrity at the time. If only People or Us had been around . . . The fact that McCurdy does not mention this incident, like the dog that didn’t bark, raises an obvious question — was he in fact aware of it? If he was, why was it not in the book? And if he was not, why didn’t Mrs. Follett inform him of it? Even more remarkably there is no record whatever of this crucial incident in her letters — there is an eight month gap from May 24, 1929 to February 1930.

It is simply not credible that Barbara, who was a prolific letter writer, would have written nothing regarding her running away during this time. It was the first indication I had that there had been something of a fiddle with her letters.

In any event, once the letters were located that was just the beginning. I had to decide what I needed to examine if I were to do what I could to clear away the fog and cobwebs (fogwebs?) from her life. In truth, the thought of reading her original letters was as noted embarrassing to me — I didn’t want to come across as a voyeur. I knew, as any reader of the book knows, that the letters quoted in Barbara had been edited to presumably make them more palatable (as McCurdy stated in the Foreward: “We had no desire to gossip, much less wound anyone.”) Sad to say, one man’s tawdry gossip is another man’s vital context. If you are going to go the raw history route, which any real historian must, you have to see and review and weigh and judge it all. For a fiction writer, editing is everything. For a historian, editing is death.

While I had hoped, given my trust of McCurdy, that what had been excluded in the book was non-essential, I was soon to discover it was anything but. Given that letters were missing, large chunks of letters in fact, leaving behind some highly visible gaps, I had no choice but to grasp at what I could to fill in the blanks. I was the first person to inquire into her literary effects since the early ‘80’s, and was according to the library records, the first to examine her letters since Helen Follett placed her daughter’s literary estate in the library, sometime in the late 60’s. I was on solid ground now, but very much on my own. There was no turning back.

Conclusion 1: While as a poetic statement of her life and an introduction to her writings, Barbara continues to have value, as a biography it can no longer be considered reliable. And for those seeking clues as to the reality of Barbara as a human being, as well as an understanding of her disappearance and the murky circumstances, this most wonderful of books is of quite limited value and frequently all but useless.

I regret having to write the above for it is likely to give a misleading impression. As always, we must ask ourselves: what were the alternatives McCurdy had? If he were determined to preserve the story and bring it to the light of day, what options did he have? Without McCurdy, the story would have been utterly lost, barely ranking a footnote, a curiosity in the history of literature. There were also other things he could have been doing with his time. But he took the time, years of it, and brought his enormous scholarship and reputation to preserve this tale of a lost literary genius, writing it under conditions that must have been quite difficult psychologically. “Walking on eggs” doesn’t begin to describe what he must have gone through.

Supposition 1: Writing the book would have undoubtedly been cathartic for both parties (McCurdy’s daughter had died in 1958, unknown circumstances), but that cannot fully explain his determination to bring this project to a conclusion. I believe from the moment he had encountered her writings, McCurdy began to fall in love with Barbara, a dead woman. There is nothing unusual or necessarily Freudian in this. It happens all the time actually – it is simply one more strategy, albeit an extreme one, to avoid intimacy and/or pain. For women, this frequently involves a flight from a male partner or the possibility of one. To do so, such women will nurture and lavish their affection on a dead relative or lover to escape the attentions of, well, anyone. We all know such women. Similarly, a man will employ the strategy to flee into the past for redemption, or to an alternate imaginary world, one that still offers the possibility of love. I neither condemn these people nor recommend such actions. It is simply part of the human condition and like everything else, requires enormous work to overcome. For an example, and as usual I have to go to art, I refer the interested reader to another event of 1958, Hitchcock’s film Vertigo, which deals with exactly that theme: recreating a dead love. I do not know if McCurdy had seen it, but given his strong interest in psychology and art, he may well have. It is one of my favorites. And, of course, I too had fallen in love with Barbara.

I digress.

Now that that the parties are long dead, with one possible exception, there can be no substitute for, no re-building upon what he accomplished. The moment was there, both parties seized it, and Barbara’s story survived, barely, and compromised. Helen Thomas’s misgivings had joined with the love they both felt for Barbara. Those were the constraints that bound the book.

Regrettably, by suppressing and glossing over crucial information, McCurdy did, I believe, in all innocent intent, a disservice to the readers. He overly romanticized the story and left the reader with what I suppose can only be described as a “misleading impression” – that of a woman who was a “spirit of the night,” who was gone from our world yet in some strange way was still with us, a Casper Hauser of the mind that instead of coming from another world or dimension, had returned to it, leaving us forever to wonder as to who she was and what her life meant. Barbara the human being had indeed vanished at the end of the book, and that was the problem.

For the sake of all concerned, I believe he should have published some sort of disavowal of the book — and perhaps he did, though I have been unable to locate it — perhaps in a private memoir of sorts concerning how the book had been come about. Such would have explained there was more to the book than met the eye, and while there was, and is, a mystery there is nothing that cannot be explained outside of the terms of mundane human reality. Part of the reason I say this is because it is clear from Mrs. Follett’s letters regarding the disappearance of her daughter, which unfortunately do not pick up until some 9 years after Barbara had vanished (another batch of letters gone missing!), that she was increasingly desperate to find any clue as to what had happened. She was also becoming increasingly suspicious.

I will be getting to those letters and what they imply soon enough, but it is evident given both her health problems and her fragile state of mind, by the time she met McCurdy she must have been near the end of her rope (“ . . . it cost her something to remember her lost child.”) No doubt. While one can only imagine the incredible sensitivity and patience he must have brought to this near impossible task of forming a coherent biography out of Barbara’s letters, her writings, and her mother’s recollections, I am under no such constraints. I have broken them.

If you prefer the story as written, then stop here now.