Constance Forbes

When Constance Forbes was a little girl (when she grew to
young girlhood, she became extremely beautiful), she was care-
fully separated from her three brothers. The separation was a
thing that she did not at first understand very well, but in
the house in which she lived with her family, the boys had a bath-
room of their own and they lived in a wing of the house which was
far from the little girl's bedroom, and one of her brothers were
older than she was by seven and five years. Richard, the oldest was
the favorite of both mother and father, perhaps because he was the
first child, perhaps because he was a boy, or perhaps because he
was in every way a charmer and a flatterer. When the two older
boys played ball, Constance wanted to play with them and they
would not permit her to play them. She was a stubborn child from the
start and she tried to get into the game and the two boys succeeded
in trying her away each time only by threatening to take off their
pants, if she did not go away. Some deep intuition was at the heart
of the threat of the boys and the fact that the stubborn Constance
was actually driven off by the threat. The difference of the sexes
was the sword of the avenging angel; but the fact that the little
girl wanted very much to play with the boys is very important too.

When Constance was three, the four and last child of the
Forbes family was born, and from infancy, Constance and Jasper
were very good friends and there was no such conflict between them
as existed between Constance and her two older brothers. The two
older boys, Richard and James, were indifferent students at school,
and in this they differed from Mr. Forbes, who had been a very good
student, a poor boy and a self-made man who worked very hard and who
did not know how to do anything but to work hard.

47.

and his anger often enough.

Maxwell's work went very well, better than ever before, and as he came to the conclusion, he supposed that perhaps to be married was best, whatever might be lacking, because his work had become so easy for him. He felt that a new part of his life had begun and this made him think freely of the past and tell Martha about the incidents of his childhood and adolescence.

"I must have been twelve", he said to her, "and I had just been given a radio set with earphones as a birthday present by one of my uncles. I listened to the radio all the time and when Strauss waltzes or music by Victor Herbert was played, I would try to get my mother to listen because I knew that that was the kind of music she liked. Obviously I had no way of knowing that such music was an infamous lie about the nature of courtship of love".

Martha smiled faintly. She supposed that Maxwell said that such music was a lie because his own courtship and marriage were so different.

"Anyway", Maxwell continued, "my mother told me that she had never been to an opera in her whole life and I was bad for a week, thinking how poor and empty her life was. I thought then that to go to the opera was part of a truly rich life and the fact that my mother had never been to an opera was truly shocking to me. What I did not understand, as I do now, was that my mother had no desire whatever to go to the opera".

"She might have said so", said Martha, who did not like her mother-in-law at all and who resented the fact that Mrs. Barnes insisted on kissing her whenever they met.

"She might have said so", Maxwell agreed, "but, in a way, I was right, for her life was poor and empty, and it is not important that I had seized upon the wrong symbol. On the other hand, it is true

that my mother always compelling me to feel sympathy and borrow
for her. Anyway, we listened one winter afternoon to the radio,
each of us with one earphone, and when an opera from an opera was
announced, I told her that I would explain to her what the opera
was about. I knew because I had "The Victor Book of the Stories of
the Opera". I know what it is about! said my mother bluntly,
although she did not. My feelings were hurt very much and I did
not understand that her feelings too had been hurt because I had
assumed her ignorance".

"What a mother", said Martha, "and what a child".

"It must have been two years after that", said Maxwell,
"that I heard my mother conversing with the neighbor who
lived on the same floor of our apartment house. They were discuss-
ing the models who were employed in the dress business and the
neighbor told my mother that these girls had to go out with the
buyers. They don't have to sleep with them, anyway", said my
mother. "I heard that they do" said the neighbor. "I am sure that
they don't", said my mother passionately. I think I must have listen-
ed to this conversation with so much interest because it was about
sex, but now as I think of it, I know that I was very much impressed
by the way that my mother insisted that the models did not sleep
with the buyers. It must have been because she hated the act of love
and she really hated men, however much she spoke of her love of my
father after he was dead. She found unbearable the idea that girls
were possessed by men. And that makes me think of the story of my
mother's courtship which my aunt told me about last year. When my
father placed his arm about my mother's shoulder, she shook him
aside impatiently, many often and my father remarked to the man who
had introduced him to my mother: "What kind of a girl is she? You
can't even hold her hand". My father was told that this showed that

It of his mother's
the hopeful future. He was
got inherited a half a million do
the great thought of The True Republic
for weeks, it seemed implausible and
he up from playing in the street
very much moved by all the reasons
his brother was and tried to cheer him up
and just heard down stairs. Then he und
lighted bedroom, while Hershey tried to
ing to read it ever since being moved by
ral.

What Hershey's being arose in one immense founta
and memory and hope.

the light next to the bed a

Hey Eden which he was going to declare, right
he would become the Lindbergh, the Moses,
vuseus or Aeneas of America.

Darknes he began to say to himself all that
true state which was to be the endless culture
utter and everlasting world-feeling from
end of eternity.

happened to him and this is what he heard
on to declare his mind. In the darkness,
and irreparable guilt and intolerable
ySTERIcal fear and joy which brought
al to him, this is what Hershey heard,
what was said to him and what he
and heard in the darkness from God or
angels, or from the darkness of his

Constance Forbes

When Constance Forbes was a little girl (when she grew to
young girlhood, she became extremely beautiful), she was care-
fully separated from her three brothers. The separation was a
thing that she did not at first understand very well, but in
the house in which she lived with her family, the boys had a bath-
room of their own and they lived in a wing of the house which was
far from the little girl's bedroom. Two of her brothers were
older than she was by seven and five years. Richard the oldest was
the favorite of both mother and father perhaps because he was the
first child, perhaps because he was a boy, or perhaps because he
was in every way a charmer and a flatterer. When the two older
boys played ball, Constance wanted to play with them and they
would not permit her to play them. She was a stubborn child from the
start and she tried to get into the game and the two boys succeeded
in trying her away each time only by threatening to take off their
pants, if she did not go away. Some deep intuition was at the heart
of the threat of the boys and the fact that the stubborn Constance
was actually driven off by the threat. The difference of the sexes
was the sword of the avenging angel; but the fact that the little
girl wanted very much to play with the boys is very important too.

2.

And thus, when it became clear that Constance was going to be a perfct
student, the parents were surprised and it was Mrs. Forbes who recognized
all
that although/the children resembled her in appearance, Constance was the
one who was like her father in temperament. Constance always received
As in school and the other girls made fun of her and from the start she
was a butt because she was both very pretty and very good as a pupil.

Mrs. Forbes was a beautiful woman precise in manner, assured
in all that she did, and satisfied with herself and her life. She had
married a man who was very successful from the start of his career and
although she though at times that he might have gone further than he did,
he had gone far enough to make possible for her and for her children
all the things that she wanted. She was not quite aware of the extent
towhich she dominated her family because it was the kind of a thing she
took for granted and had taken for granted from the moment of her marriage.
It was an eminence, an absolute dominion which she acquired during the
courtship. Her husband was not a good-looking man, and in her acceptance
of him thre was a condensacion which she neither forgot nor wished
to forget, although she loved her husabn very much. In fact, it might
very well be said that she loved him very much because of this relation-
ship in which he always strove to please her very much and never quite
succeeded.

All the children felt the mother's dominion and the mother's
beauty. Mrs. Forbes felt nothing of the kind because it was the very air
she breathed, it was a state of nature. The children existed to be seen
and not to be heard and not to disturb anyone else, certainly not their
parents. When the parents want out to an important dinner party, Mrs.
Forbes went to kiss them goodnight in her evening gown and furs, and
a kind of shock occurred for each of the children when, just before
sleep, they received their mother's formal and dutiful kiss. When James

2.

Mrs. Forbes was a beautiful woman, precise in manner, assured in all that she did, and satisfied with herself and her life. She had married a man who was very successful from the start of his career and although she though at times that he might have gone further than he did, he had gone far enough to make possible for her and for her children all the things that she wanted. She was not quite aware of the extent towhich she dominated her family because it was the kind of a thing she took for granted and had taken for granted from the moment of her marriage. It was an eminence, an absolute dominion which she acquired during the courtship. Her husband was not a good-looking man, and in her acceptance of him there was a condensacion which she neither forgot nor wished to forget, although she loved her husabdn very much. In fact, it might very well be said that she loved him very much because of this relationship in which he always strove to please her very much and never quite succeeded.

All the children felt the mother's dominion and the mother's beauty. Mrs. Forbes felt nothing of the kind because it was the very air she breathed, it was a state of nature. The children existed to be seen and not to be heard and not to disturb anyone else, certainly not their parents. When the parents whnt out to an important dinner party, Mrs. Forbes went to kiss them goodnight in her evening gown and furs, and a kind of shock occurrd for each of the children when, just before sleep, they received their mother's formal and dutiful kiss. When James

3.

sat up in bed one night and sought to clutch his mother and gain
his mother's again, the sternness which appeared upon her face was
a look which became an important part of his being, and it is put-
haps not fanciful to suppose that this may have had something to
do with his hopeless courtship of girls who would not accept him,
and his indifference to the many girls who were attracted to him
by his good looks.

as a child

Constance felt the same kind of a rebuff when/she asked her mother who she loved best in the world. Mrs. Forbes told the little girl that she must understand that she was a kind of love reserved for Mr. Forbes which was quite apart from what she might have for her children. The reply was too formal to be understood by the child. The tone was such that it was for the little girl an absolute rejection. And the fact was that Mrs. Forbes did give to her oldest boy Richard an attention and a kind of warmth which Constance perceived and resented.

During the time when it began to be clear that Constance
was the kind of a pupil who was going to surpass all others, Richard
was in college and he was not making out very well. Jasper too had
begun to go to college and he too from the start did not make out
very well, and Mr. and Mrs. Forbes expressed no little amazement
at the paradox that the little girl who had only to be beautiful
was the one who should excell while the two boys were mediocre. In
fact, Richard was the mediocre one. Jasper was a failure and he
was unable to get through college at a 11, though it would have been
a simple matter to get him through with the aid of tutoring bureaux.
And this suggests that there may have been some disappointed desire
on Jasper's part to fail utterly, or perhaps he had failed so prof-
oundly with his mother that he was unable to surmount that experience.

from St. Louis and Hershey knew some
using ground. Eva Green wrote to
ask him to find out if anything was
and was disappointed from day to/ day host
to get his hands on his Chrysler.

When Mack finally arrived he expected
he said he had very disappointing news for them. He said
almost no money in the estate. It consisted almost wholly of mortg
which were at present difficult to collect and a vast number of unsold
real estate lots whose values had become "problematic" because of the
depression. The Probate Court's letter about the value of the estate
had been based on assessments made in 1928, when the value of the real
estate had already begun to decrease.

The best thing Hershey could do was to sell his car
which was downstairs and get a job. There was no money for him to go
to college right now, and there would be none until the whole estate
was "liquidated". What there would be left after the liquidation was
hard to say ???, but because of the depression it might be very
little. The real estate properties were just white elephants, said
Mack. He talked too fast and seemed to be drunk and to have been drunk
for days. He explained his roundabout trip by saying he had had a sicl
friend in Detroit and another sick friend in Detroit.

Hershey refused to believe a word that Mack said. He
was convinced that this was not true. It was the kind of scheme he
had read about, a scheme to defraud heirs who had not reached their
majority. He was paralyzed by the shock/?? of losing his day dream
of a half a million dollars. Mack saw how he felt and told him that
perhaps after the depression was over, and it might not last forever,
the value of the real estate might increase a good deal. Then Mack
left, after giving Hershey the keys to his Chrysler and the ownership
license.

Two days after, Eva Green's Chicago attorney to say that Jack had been forced to resign as a guardian because the Bank which was also an executor had done to court and shown how that he had been engaged in dishonest business deals for the last few months. But what he said of Jack Green's wealth was true. Jack Green had taken all his hard cash and spent it trying to hold on to the stocks he had on margin when the market fell in October. The real estate was practically worthless at present because of the depression. Hershey saw that the depression was the cause of the whole collapse and said to his mother that it was bound to end soon. Some of the newspapers said so; Eva Green was inclined to agree that matters were not as black as attorneys had painted them and she decided to go to Chicago and see for herself, for like Hershey she thought someone might be stealing from the two boys.