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1917-06-21: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
Woods Hole,
June 21, 1917

Dear Eva:

My laboratory boxes have not come yet so I feel that I have time to write a letter.  As soon as I get to the end of this ribbon I am going to put a new one on.  This is getting too pale for beaty.  My new one is black and red so prepare to see the important points come out in red.

Regina Stockhausen and I came down here yesterday.  It was hot and dirty, dreadfully dirty on the train from Boston.  I left South Hadley at 8 and arrived here at 3:40.  We cleaned up a little - took off several layers of cinders and smoke and then started out to find rooms.  They gave us a list and a map at the laboratory.  We trotted the town pretty steadily up to eight o'clock.  We stopped for supper - in fact we were so hungry that we sat on the porch at the M*** waiting for the door to be opened.  In spite of the H.C.L. the board has gone up only $.50 a week; it is now $5.50 and is just as good, if not better than three years ago.  They have beans growing all over the front yard of the laboratory and two niggers were out cultivating them this morning.

At eight o'clock we came back to the first place and took a room that we did not want at 4 o'lock.  When we started out it was as it was in Savannah - we wanted two rooms, and a bath and a good view, or at least fresh air and no mosquitos, plenty of closet room and to be near to the laboratory.  We finally took a double room, and not very double at that, with one closet fo fair size, a bathroom but without the use of the tub, a good view and it is near the laboratory.  We gave up several places because the smell of the house was too much for us.  They do not believe in having windows open in the bedrooms, evidently.

It is lovely down here and the air is delicious.  I had forgotten just how nice it is.  There are not many here yet and I have seen only a few that I know.  We went to see my lot yesterday the very first thing but we had some difficulty in seeing it because of the luxuriant growth of vegetation on it; it has some scrubby pines, several gray birches and a dense tangle of vines, chiefly poison ivy.  I want to begin clearing it but I do not want to get into the ivy.  We saw Miss Clapp's cottage but it is not nearly ready yet and will not be ready for a month probably.  Miss Clapp is coming down on Monday and she may be able to hurry things a bit.  The location of my lot is very good.  It is low I think but probably it can be filled in, if necessary.  It is not in the mosquitoy part of town.  I suppose that there are some but it is near the bay and not near the woods.

Our trunks came this morning and we are unpacked and settled.  We are rather crowded but fortunately we do not have to stay in our room much.  We are waiting for our express from the laboratory.  We shall do some reading if it does not come soon as we can't waste time (after we have finished writing to our dear sister which is not a waste of time).

I intended to leave on Tuesday and have a day in Boston but I could not pack up in time.  You see I had to pack to leave Safford.  I did leave some things in a closet but I shall have to remove them when I go back next month.  I took all my books over to Williston.  Fred helped me with them.  After doing so much packing at Fred's and at Safford I felt as if I had been at it forever.  I stayed at Safford until Wednesday; Miss Rhodehouse asked us to do it.  We are supposed to leave Saturday morning.  Miss Rhodehouse invited Fred up for Saturday night.  That made sure that he would be up in time for my birthday dinner.  We had a late breakfast with some cornbread for Fred.  We intended to have a picnic but it rained Sunday morning, and it had rained Saturday, and Friday and Thursday and other days too numerous to mention so we had a dinner at Garden House.  I had Katherine roast a chicken and I got several other things; Miss Rhodehouse contributed some things and Grace made Strawberry ice cream.  Miss Rhodehouse and Miss Haskell were there.  Grace and Miss Hinsdale had to interrupt their "Eat and Grow Thin" diet for the occasion.  We stayed there all day and in the evening played anagrams.  Grace gave me a towel with crotched lace in one end - a very fine towel.  Anne gave me a knitting bag so I promptly ordered the yarn for your sweater.  I will send a sample if I can find it.  I got the same kind as I have in mine and it is a good deal heavier than the other sample.  I am not so sure that I need to make yours larger than mine what I really need was to have made mine smaller than yours.  Mine is too large.  I may send it down to you to try on to see what changes you would like.  I can make the next one better and more quickly, I hope.  They did not have the yarn in stock, that is enough of it so they will send it when it comes.  They told me that it ought all to be from the same lot on account of the dye.  I am at the point where I can knit and read at the same time.  I can't knit quite as fast and I have to be careful when I come to the border.  I do not know how much time I will have to knit down here.

I wondered why I did not get a birthday letter from you - you are always so good about remembering.  One I got mixed on the day myself when I was packing.  Packing will knock anything out of one's head, even my birthday.  Don't get me anything unless you see some nice little lingerie pins in silver.  You will need all you have this summer at the prices which you are paying.  If you are rich in the fall you can get me something for my apartment.  Fred gave me a check which will help out nicely.  I do not know whether to get some silver or to use some of yours which you offered to me once.  There seem to be other things which I need worse.  I shall have to get some new dishes and new furniture.  I can hardly wait to get in.  The house is up to the second story.

[Extra note on the side:] Mother sent me your rug.  I can make good use of it. [End of the extra note.]

I can't tell yet about going to Cape May this summer.  You see I bought a bond!  Fred bought two.  He went down to the bank on Thursday night and there was such a crowd that he was afraid that I would not get in the next day so he bought me one, too.  He got me a $50 bond and I went the next morning and got a $100 bond.  I can't pay him before Christmas for it.  I shall be poor this summer.  I am getting used to it and it is getting fashionable to save money.  I shall probably work at the college when I go back.  Mr. Kinney suggested that I take charge of the work of putting away vegetables - drying corn and salting beans.  That would be noble work, just my kind.  If that does not work out I shall look out for something else.  I really want something useful and I prefer something at which I can pay part of my expenses.  I would get my living at the college.  If I have enough money and am not busy I would love to come.  I think that we had better have Mother come up here after she has had three weeks with you or else help you pay her board, the latter might be better.  I think that you will have too much with such high priced board.  It will not be nearly so much in South Hadley, (nor so good.)

Fred took Miss Rhodehouse and me out for a picnic Monday night to the place where we had a picnic and you said you did not have enough to eat.  You would be surprised to see how much grown up it is.  Tuesday evening we picnicked in Miss Hinsdale's garden.  I hope that Fred will go up there often while I am away.  They like to have him come.  Saturday night we were at the Pell's.  We had "pirok" and Fred liked it very much.  He also like the "Russian cutlets" - a kind of fried beef loaf.  He played chess with both Mr. and Mrs. Pell.  They both beat him, but they are both in practise.  They want him to come often in the evening.  I got him a very nice room at a good place - the Phoenix Building, on Dwight Street one block above MacAuslan's.  It is on the 4th floor.  I am at the end of the paper that I brought down here from my room.

With love,
​Alma.
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1917-06-21: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
As soon as I get to the end of this ribbon I am going to put a new one on.  This is getting too pale for beaty.  My new one is black and red so prepare to see the important points come out in red.
There's red typing in the letter, so Alma must have gotten to the end of the ribbon before she got to the end of the letter.

2.
​Regina Stockhausen and I came down here yesterday.
I don't know who Regina Stockhausen was.

3.
​We cleaned up a little - took off several layers of cinders and smoke and then started out to find rooms.  They gave us a list and a map at the laboratory.
Wow.  Just coming to Woods Hole on June 20th with no worries about being able to come up with a place to stay, and this must be what everybody did.  But not necessarily with pleasing results, which would have made the idea of owning a home in Woods Hole more attractive.

4.
​We stopped for supper - in fact we were so hungry that we sat on the porch at the M*** waiting for the door to be opened.
Is the M*** the Mess or Mess Hall, or something else?  I don't know.

​5.
In spite of the H.C.L. the board has gone up only $.50 a week; it is now $5.50 and is just as good, if not better than three years ago.
I guess H.C.L. must be the High Cost of LIving.  Apparently Alma had not spent a summer in Woods Hole since 1914.  In the summer 1915 she went to California with her mother.  I think she visited Will and his family in 1916, but not for the whole summer.

6.
They have beans growing all over the front yard of the laboratory and two niggers were out cultivating them this morning.
Here's the racist epithet.  I'm surprised to see it here; I would have expected Alma to say "colored people" or some such thing.  Maybe it was an indication that she didn't consider the guys doing the cultivating to be lower class than the black people she met at Oberlin.  I don't know.

7.
​When we started out it was as it was in Savannah
I assume that Alma was talking about the heat.  There's another such mention of Savannah by her somewhere or other.

8.
We went to see my lot yesterday the very first thing but we had some difficulty in seeing it because of the luxuriant growth of vegetation on it; it has some scrubby pines, several gray birches and a dense tangle of vines, chiefly poison ivy.  I want to begin clearing it but I do not want to get into the ivy.  We saw Miss Clapp's cottage but it is not nearly ready yet and will not be ready for a month probably.  Miss Clapp is coming down on Monday and she may be able to hurry things a bit.  The location of my lot is very good.  It is low I think but probably it can be filled in, if necessary.  It is not in the mosquitoy part of town.  I suppose that there are some but it is near the bay and not near the woods.

Fernbank!  It sounds as though some developer bought a big lot by the Mill Pond and split it up, and advertised it at Mount Holyoke in the spring of 1917, and Alma bought a lot, sight unseen. 

Alma hadn't been in Woods Hole for nearly three years, but I guess it sounded like a good idea to her, especially since Miss Clapp was buying.  Did Alma get to look at a map and choose a lot, or was one just assigned to her?  I don't know.

Of course Alma the botanist had no trouble identifying the vegetation on the lot; if it had been me, I'd have said, "A bunch of trees and lot of undergrowth."  And of course Alma the botanist wanted to get her hands on it right away, but knew better.

And yes, the lot was on low ground.  I don't think it was ever filled in; rather, In 1946 Alma raised by several feet the house that she had built.

Here's a map that Alma drew of the area where her lot was.  It's in a July letter to Eva: I used to think it was totally misplaced, but now I think that it may well have been included in the July letter, since it sounds as though Alma didn't have time to create it for this letter.
Picture
Alma's map of her lot in Woods Hole
9.
​I intended to leave on Tuesday and have a day in Boston but I could not pack up in time.
June 21, 1917 was a Thursday, and Alma and Regina came down the day before, on Wednesday the 20th.

10.
You see I had to pack to leave Safford.  I did leave some things in a closet but I shall have to remove them when I go back next month.  I took all my books over to Williston.
It sounds as though Alma was living at Safford during the academic year, and expected to be in another apartment during the coming academic year.  Williston was not a residential building, but rather the art and science building.  It burned down later that same year.

11.
​I stayed at Safford until Wednesday; Miss Rhodehouse asked us to do it.
Miss Rhodehouse must have been Elizabeth Rhodehouse, a friend from Oberlin days.

12.
​We intended to have a picnic but it rained Sunday morning, and it had rained Saturday, and Friday and Thursday and other days too numerous to mention so we had a dinner at Garden House.
Alma's 40th birthday was Sunday, June 17, 1917.  Garden House was the home of Alma's friend Ellen Hinsdale, who is mentioned later in this lster, and who is in the Non-family page for South Hadley folks on this website.

​13.
I had Katherine roast a chicken and I got several other things; Miss Rhodehouse contributed some things and Grace made Strawberry ice cream.  Miss Rhodehouse and Miss Haskell were there.
I don't know who Katherine was.  Grace must have been Grace Bacon, who is in the Non-family page for South Hadley folks.  I don't know who Miss Haskell was.

14.
Anne gave me a knitting bag so I promptly ordered the yarn for your sweater.
Anne must be Alma's friend Anne Starr, who has a Non-family page of her own on this website.  Alma did lots of knitting in World War I.

​15.
I do not know whether to get some silver or to use some of yours which you offered to me once.
I wonder if this silver of Eva's was a wedding present from 1909.

16.
I can't tell yet about going to Cape May this summer.
Alma later decided not to go to Cape May, as reported in her July letter.

17.
​I shall probably work at the college when I go back.  Mr. Kinney suggested that I take charge of the work of putting away vegetables - drying corn and salting beans.  That would be noble work, just my kind.  If that does not work out I shall look out for something else.  I really want something useful and I prefer something at which I can pay part of my expenses.  I would get my living at the college.
It sounds as though Alma was really up in the air this summer: she moved out of Safford, went to Woods Hole but for only a month, and then was going back to South Hadley, but in need of a little cash because of buying the Fernbank lot and also some war bonds.  She was a tenured professor and head of the botany department at Mount Holyoke College, but Alma always had good ideas for spending money.

Mr. Kinney was a botany teacher of some sort at Mount Holyoke.  I've seen his name elsewhere but haven't thought about him much.

18.
Fred took Miss Rhodehouse and me out for a picnic Monday night to the place where we had a picnic and you said you did not have enough to eat.  You would be surprised to see how much grown up it is.  Tuesday evening we picnicked in Miss Hinsdale's garden.  I hope that Fred will go up there often while I am away.
Fred's wife Mabel had died in May of 1917, so Alma was sort of worried about him.

​19.
Saturday night we were at the Pell's.
I don't know who the Pells were.  I may have seen their name elsewhere, but I can't remember.
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