Continuing on a thread from 2011, I'll continue along Minerva Teichert's autobiography:
I fell quite in love with a young country boy near Soda, but
Ben Dixon spent money on me. He visited my home in vacation. He wrote to me
every day. I believe, of course, his bon bons won me. We became engaged. I took
up a homestead so did he. He wanted me to marry him and live on his homestead.
I wanted him to come live on mine till I “proved up”. We were both keeping
still about those homesteads, but finally fess up. We were both obligated to
our fathers and had to “prove up”. I tried to final proof in fourteen months
but failed, so did he… So, it would be at least three years residence before we
could get married.
I had by now finished the 3 year Academic Course at the Art
Institute in Chicago was back in Idaho dead broke and in debt. I took the first
chance teaching a country school again. My family was living in Arizona so I
went to my cousins in Sterling, Idaho where I taught 60 pupils in a tucked u[p]
room without space for aisles. I would prove up on my homestead in early spring
and be married soon as school was out. The night before I went to be married
the brother of my cousin’s wife, who had been an admirer for a number of years,
stayed late. He just sat there holding my hand in his silent way and the tears
ran down the insides of his eyelids. If he had asked me I think I would have
given Ben Dixon up, but he didn’t. He just held my hand very tight, almost
crushing it, and let me trek on. I think he didn’t hear a word I said.
At last I was visiting with my other cousins, the Wades in
Ft. Hall Bottoms when we went to American Falls to see “A Hundred Years of
Mormonism” played in Film. An old chum asked, “What will your folks think when
they find you’ve married out of the church?” I answered flippantly, “Oh, we
should worry. After it’s over they’ll like it alright.” But her eyes told me
she did not believe me. To tell the truth it was the first time I had thot
about it. That night on the Bottoms I dreamed another man came and begged me
not to marry Ben Dixon—that I was meant for him. I was angry and answered, “Of
course I shall. I’m going to married next Sunday.” I could not see his face
distinctly –I did not want to. I feared it might be Herman Teichert and he did
not speak good enough American for me, but I noted the tweed of his suit and in
a life time I could never forget the tiny red and orange flecks in that soft
dark tweed. I have watched for it and longed to find it as I have traveled in
cars across America. I’ve looked for it in the crowds on Coney Island, Atlantic
City, Broadway, on the boats between New York and Boston. Sometimes I’d think I
saw it, then the old man who stood behind the wearer would not be there. What would
I have done had I recognized the particular tweed? I do not know. It seemed, in
my dream, that everything in his life depended upon marrying me and he wept. I
became alarmed and said, “why I’ll not marry Ben Dixon if you don’t want me to.
I’m sure he doesn’t care so much for me as that.” When I woke up it seemed I
could hear him saying, “You’ll never wait, you’ll never wait.”
I was so distressed I got up and dressed at the first hint
of day. I walked along the river throwing rocks into the water and skimming
them across the glassy surface and calling on my rebellious friends. Would I
listen to a fool of a dream when I was to be married next Sunday?
At breakfast my cousin, Clarence Wade, said, “Minerva, what
makes you so pale this morning and why were you walking along the river in the
night?” “Oh, nothing,” I answered, but he and Cousin Marion, his wife both
insisted I tell them what was the matter, so I told them my dream in an
insolent way. They both declared, “You’ll never marry Ben Dixon.” Of course it
was up to me to show them. For the fi[r]st time Ben Dixon asked me in a letter
who should perform the ceremony. I answered Pres. Hyde of Pocatello Stake, my
father’s friend. His next letter came Thursday. He said something that could
never be unsaid—“I would rather live single all my life than to be married by a
Mormon or in a Mormon church.” It was the first thing he had ever said against
the Mormons and while I made no profession of religion I made the home plate
with both feet. “Start your life!” was my answer. He came to me begging
forgiveness but in his apology I detected a lie. He said he objected only to
Pres. Hyde. So in Pocatello I saw President Hyde to ask if they had ever had
any differences—Ben Dixon was a deputy sheriff at this time and Pres. Hyde
Probate Judge. Wm A. Hyde answered, “No, indeed. I have always admired the
young man. We are friends.”
Well, it was a shock to my vanity. For four or five years he
had written to me every day or every other day and his letters had lead me to
believe him deeply in love. I tho[ugh]t I should marry the man who loved me so
much even tho[ugh] back in Sterling I was leaving one that I loved more. So
Herman became my real sweetheart and my family moved back from Arizona. They
wanted me to marry a Mormon boy. I knew none or ever had except speaking
acquaintances so after another year’s teaching and to avoid our approaching
wedding day, Mother offered to help me go to New York to study under Robert Henri.
She begged me to wait a year. So I took French leave of Herman who was in Idaho
while I taught in Pleasant View, Utah. I was easy to do at first for I wanted
very much to study under Robert Henri, but what should I do with Herman. I quit—told
him to marry a friend of ours. I was leaving him behind. This washed my hands
of him. I think I threw his pleading letters on the floor and walked on them
for days at a time, but I didn’t feel that way and many times I fought back the
bitter tears with folly. I gathered a crowd about me in my boarding home. I
kept in a crowd at the Art Student’s League. I was no longer a dashing girl. I
was from now on mature. I did not ever let myself think. I painted like mad
under Dimitri Romanoffski. I had had three years of drawing at the Art
Institute under John Vanderpool but I joined a Bridgman drawing class in New
York and stayed with him until he told me what ever told few, “You can draw as
well as I, now, paint.”
There are a few details here as pertains to Minerva’s
family:
(a)
The extended relationship with different cousins
– different sets on her mother’s side.
(b)
Fred’s relationship to William A. Hyde of the
Pocatello stake. The relationship here would have been through the church, not
via a professional relationship.
(c)
There is a shocking resemblance or repetition
between Ella and Fred’s courtship, along with Minerva’s. It’s a sort of
mystical romance. The finding of one’s spouse via a dream. There’s also the way
the “wrong match” was to be short circuited. Ella used an engagement to get her
mother to allow her to go to school. She now was using the desire and promise
for school to keep her own daughter from getting married.
(d)
Her parents cared that she stay married within
the faith (even though she does not; Herman later converts when she goes to the
hospital for lead poisoning). It’s somewhat surprising that Minerva had not
thought about it to this point. Her parents were very religious and involved in
the Mormon community. She helped fund a mission her father fulfilled in his 40’s.
How did she not think about this until this time? What does that say about
Minerva?
(e)
Parents go to and from Arizona. It’s not clear
what makes them return or exactly when they returned based on these notes,
something I will have to tease out further. I have a good sense of when they
left, but not when they came back.
(f) Obligation to the father. Was this a financial and/or moral obligation? It is something she shared with Ben Dixon.
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