translate to arabic:"Nothing like that innocent, childlike and patronizingly “feminine” picture
emerges from these engagement books and calendars. According to these
documents, a year after her wedding Mildred comes out of her isolation to
start spending time with some of the foremost composers, performers and
conductors of the twentieth century. Even if Andrew cared nothing for music,
even if he actively disliked it, would this not be worthy of mention? Who
would omit the fact that his wife was in the habit of hosting musiciansranging from Pau Casals to Edgard Varèse? Why present her as a dabbling
little girl?
Mildred seems to have been eager to keep herself out of the press. I find
only a few clippings where she is mentioned, in passing, as a benefactor or
an attendee at some function, her name among others. Her passion and her
contributions were private matters. I suppose people in her circle—society
people—must have known about her cultural life, and I can’t help but think
this is one of the reasons Bevel chose me, a Brooklyn girl, for the job.
By 1925 Mildred’s handwriting has deteriorated further. Her traces often
can resemble a series of scratches. Some pages are too daunting to even try.
It is frustrating that her words should become more and more impenetrable
just as she starts showing signs of interest in politics and current affairs.
I open an undated scrapbook with newspaper clippings. Dense annotations
and marginalia surround many of the excerpts.
“To Test Radioscope Across Atlantic: Germans Will Try Sending Script
and Photographs by Air Instantaneously”; “Bond Issue Called Unsound:
Smith’s $100,000,000 Plan a ‘Pork Barrel’ to Be Spent All Over the State,
He Says”; “$2,000,000 in Gold Here From Japan: Shipment Makes
$9,000,000 Exported Since September to Protect Exchange”; “New Low in
Coarse Grains: Corn and Oats Are Selling Below 1924–25 Figures”; “New
Electric Bulb Cuts Lamp Costs: Manufacturers Agree on Standard Which
Will Reduce the 45 Designs to 5.”
I spend a good while going through these pages. Just like Mildred’s
musical activities these clippings do not fit Andrew’s homey, childlike
description of his wife. That incarnation of Mrs. Bevel is incompatible with
someone who engages in political commentary (even if in private) or has an
interest, however fleeting, in current events. And this scrapbook also feels out
of place in Vanner’s version of Mildred. Helen Rask, the quiet aesthete,
would never dissect and gloss the news. And precisely because the image of
her that comes forward in this scrapbook differs so drastically from the
portrait offered by those two men, I feel this is my first glimpse of the real
Mildred Bevel.Once done with the first box, I decide to take a break from Mildred’s runes
and request the last of Andrew Bevel’s files from the year 1938.
There is not much to see, probably because his office secretaries kept most
of his records. After all, this is a collection of personal papers, and Andrew
Bevel barely had a personal life. Calendars, address books, lists of gifts—
items include candlesticks, billiard tables (for three different people), cuff
links (for two) and a fishing rod.
The fourth file folder I take out makes the room recede.
Here is my Royal portable’s distinctive “e,” with its over-inked, blackedout eye.
Here is my often undotted “i.”
Here are my discreet dogears.
Here is the system of editing symbols I devised back then and still use.
Here are my tidy notes, more school-like than professional.
Here, more vivid than in any picture, at twenty-three years old, I am.
One by one I go through the pages. They are drafts of Bevel’s
autobiography, and there are several of his notes to my text. His comments
are mostly wordless: he strikes through this line, crosses out that paragraph,
moves a circled passage to the top or the bottom of the page with an abrupt
arrow. Scattered all over the pages are several asterisks indicating sections
to be discussed in person so that he could point out inaccuracies, correct the
tone or address other issues that were too long for him to put in writing.
I pause on a passage that describes how his great-grandfather started his
business:
William acquired a sizable loan against his father’s property and
then borrowed more upon that sum. He went deep into debt with
the intention of buying from those who, like his parents, were
unable to sell their goods. But rather than tobacco, which he
would have been unable to store properly, he purchased nonperishable goods, especially cotton from farther south and sugar
from the newly acquired Louisiana.I think of my father. He would always say that every dollar bill had been
printed on paper ripped off a slave’s bill of sale. I can still hear him today.
“Where does all this wealth here come from? Primitive accumulation. The
original theft of land, means of production and human lives. All throughout
history, the origin of capital has been slavery. Look at this country and the
modern world. Without slaves, no cotton; without cotton, no industry; without
industry, no finance capital. The original, unnamable sin.” I keep reading
through the draft. Of course, not a single mention of slavery.
Yes, at the time my father and I needed the money; yes, Bevel was
imposing and I was young. But none of this gives me any comfort.
I reach the section on Mildred. After having gone through her papers and
getting a sense of who she truly might have been, I cringe at the trivial scenes
I made up for her. I am shocked to see the extent to which Andrew pushed his
wife out of his autobiography—and ashamed of my complicity. There are
several segments, perfectly harmless to my mind, that he has briskly edited
out. From what I have learned going through her papers today, these
passages presented an extremely watered-down version of Mildred. And yet,
after her death, her husband thought her presence should be reduced even
more. Bevel’s decision to write an autobiography was moved, to a large
extent, by his desire to clear his wife’s name and show that she was not the
mentally ill recluse in Vanner’s novel. But reading these pages, it seems that
more than vindicating Mildred he wanted to turn her into a completely
unremarkable, safe character—just like the wives in the autobiographies of
the Great Men I read during that time to come up with Bevel’s voice. Put her
in her place.
Perhaps this is what Harold Vanner tried to do in his way as well. Why
present that broken image of Mildred in his novel? This is a question I have
asked myself again and again since first reading Bonds. Why make her mad
when she was obviously so lucid? Over the years I considered different
answers—jealousy, vengeance, sheer malice—but in the absence of details
about Vanner’s life I always came back to the same conclusion: he broke her
mind and her body simply because it made for a better story (a story he could
not resist telling, even if it debased her and, in the end, destroyed him). Heforced her into the stereotype of fated heroines throughout history, made to
offer the spectacle of their own ruin. Put her in her place.
The next box they bring me contains financial records of Mildred’s
charities. Just as the passion for music that is so palpable in her engagement
books contradicts the amateurish and decidedly middlebrow picture Andrew
painted of her, so these papers challenge the notion of Mildred as a passive
or reckless philanthropist. Here is someone who not only knows exactly to
whom the gifts are allocated but also uses her contributions to shape the
institutions she supports. All her endowments seem to be tightly restricted,
and Mildred specifies in each case how the dividends from the principal she
donated should be expended.
It is all written in purple ink. She uses an accounting system I am not fully
able to figure out, partially because her handwriting is so hard to read (and
my knowledge of bookkeeping is limited to what I taught myself fifty years
ago) but mostly because Mildred’s methods are highly idiosyncratic. These
are not regular balance sheets. Her approach reminds me of my editing
symbols, which no one understands except for me. Both of us, it seems, had to
create our tools and systems to tackle jobs for which we received no formal
education.
In addition to Mildred’s donations that Bevel told me about (predictably,
to the opera and some other high-profile orchestras and cultural institutions)
she sponsors scholarships for students in the arts and sciences, expands a
library or creates a series of grants. As time goes by, she becomes
emboldened and has more funds at her command. She no longer supports
libraries but builds them. From the dates on her sheets and some letters it
seems clear that the birth of the Albany Symphony Orchestra must have been
the direct result of her gifts."