by Rose Jenster
When I met my own husband for the first time, I was uncertain if I had made an error in coming out here. He was too handsome for a start, and would not even meet my eyes. I realize it is fruitless to caution you when I have only my own happy tale to relate. Still, I would have you heed my warning. Not every man in the west has fine intentions and a good heart. Not every man who advertises for a bride is looking for a beloved wife…above half of them are looking for a woman who will raise their brood of children , tend the garden and the livestock and work like a fieldhand.
Do not imagine that life out here is easy or gracious. The conveniences of life in Albany (though I know about your father’s sad passing and the necessary alteration in your family’s lifestyle) are far above those you will find in Billings. We are a railroad town, which is an advantage in modernity. A shop and a saloon and church are about all you can confidently expect.
In Albany you can get virtually any item you want if you have the money to pay for it. Here, if there is a certain type of canned fruit or a particular color of ribbon you wish for, you must mail order it and expect to wait some months.
You cannot go to a library for information. You must subscribe to a lending library for novels and then it is months after their release before they arrive. There is only one local newspaper and its offerings run more toward the local—upcoming church socials and about cows that got loose—rather than featuring serious national events.
As for society, church and sewing circle encompass the whole of the social calendar. You will find no literary group, no card parties nor afternoon teas. The focus is on survival in a harsh land and taking pleasure in the simple things—the beauty of nature, a sunset, a letter from home. I prize my sister-in-law Jane’s lively correspondence or a visit from a friend.
My friend Tess, an Albany girl too, has settled out here herself and her presence is the greatest possible comfort to me. I was, despite finding myself most fortunately settled, a bit lonesome for my old home and friends, so when she arrived, it was an answer to a prayer.
That being said, I urge you to wait. Do not delve into the matrimonial advertisements until you hear from me again. I wish to think on this circumstance a little before I offer you my recommendations. For now, my advice is to think seriously on the possibility of life out west, and to wait as patiently as you may.
Regards,
Leah
Charlotte gripped the letter, a smile on her face, and nodded. She folded it and put it in her pocket to read again later. Leah had cautioned her and urged her to wait. But the salient point was that Leah had written back and tacitly agreed to engage in a conversation about Charlotte coming west as a bride. Now she had only to wait…and perhaps to glance at an issue of that matrimonial newspaper just for the sake of information.
Chapter 3
Frank Barton tightened the bolts on his printing press and climbed out from beneath the cantankerous machine when he heard the door in the front office open and close. He looked around for a rag on which to wipe his greasy hands, but saw that he’d forgotten to bring one. He shrugged and stepped out into the front office. It was not the morning newsboy with his pouch of coins, but the wife of the innkeeper.
“Mrs. Rogers, good day. How may I help you?” he said.
She was a quiet woman, dignified and respectable. He waited for her reply but she looked a trifle ill at ease so he continued.
“Are you here to place an advertisement? Or did you wish to have a copy of the day’s news?” he offered.
“No, no, that isn’t it at all,” she said. “I wish to speak with you about a personal matter and honestly it makes me a bit uncomfortable. Do not be distressed, Mr. Barton, as all is well. My dear husband knows of my errand and approves it so have no concern that this is anything improper,” she said self-consciously.
“I see that you are ill at ease, Mrs. Rogers. If there is a necessity of speaking with me on some delicate topic, do be frank. I’m a newspaperman. I’m most comfortable with facts, not with the finer feelings of womenfolk,” he said gruffly. It troubled him to see this good woman so obviously discomfited.
“May I sit?” she asked and he nodded. She seated herself in a wooden chair by the window and removed a paper from her reticule.
“I come from Albany, New York, as you may know. I received a letter yesterday from a young woman of my acquaintance in that city. She is a fine writer.”
“Are you suggesting I engage her services to bring an eastern perspective to my newspaper?”
“Well, not exactly. No.” Leah took a long breath. “I’m suggesting that you should write to her.”
“I’m certain if she has talent as you say that she will find useful business advice nearer to home. And, more properly, from a woman rather than a confirmed bachelor out on the frontier. I need hardly tell you it is not appropriate that I should take an interest in the career of a total stranger who is also a young woman. I’m sure she would appreciate your efforts on her behalf, but I must decline. I have a press to repair and, I do beg your pardon, but I have no interest in corresponding with a woman writer in Albany.”
“I think you might be interested to know she has been writing under a male pseudonym, reporting news of the most important and serious sort herself.”
“That is singular and admirable. However, that has not increased my interest in her career.”
“I hadn’t hoped you’d write and give her career advice, Mr. Barton. I had thought to have you consider her as a bride. I would be happy to provide a written introduction as a prelude to your correspondence,” she said crisply, finding her voice suddenly. “You may not realize but I matched Luke with his bride. She is a dear friend of my own, in a similar fashion and it has led to great happiness. I thought to do you a favor by introducing you to a remarkable young woman with many wonderful qualities” she finished with asperity.
Frank was taken aback. Because she was a lady he could not reply as he would if a man had made such an astounding and impertinent suggestion. He struggled to muster any politeness in the face of the intrusion.
“No thank you, Mrs. Rogers. I have no wish to marry and if I did, I would not look to the aspiring writers of New York to choose a bride. Good day.”
He gave her a brief nod and stormed back to his printing press, incensed by the woman’s interference. Frank heard her close the door on her way out and he turned and kicked the printing press which groaned in return for its mistreatment. He was disgusted that people in Billings were still talking about how he ought to get married. It was as if they couldn’t stand to see a man alone, living his life, pursuing his business.
Just last summer at the social, the minister and his wife had insisted he sit with their visiting niece for lemonade. She was decent enough, he supposed, but he wasn’t interested in having curtains hung in his rooms or having someone to answer to about the cleanliness of his fingernails. He kept odd hours and liked the bachelor life.
Frank enjoyed having fatback and coffee at two in the morning and bedding down in his work clothes. His newspaper was successful, even had subscribers as far away as Helena. He couldn’t imagine why the town busybodies cared if he had a woman to court. Someday, a long time from now, he might decide he wanted a family and then he’d have his pick of the young girls in town, he reckoned. This was assuming that someone had daughters who grew up between now and then, since women were fairly rare in Montana Territory still.
Shaking his head, he returned to the task at hand. Frank hated his printing press. It was a necessary evil, he supposed, for a man who wanted to sell papers. He wanted people to read and be interested in what he wrote. Frank had no luck getting into the newspaper business in St. Louis, his previous home. That was why he’d come out west with his secondhand press in a freight car on the same train.
Frank had been determined to write, to get his words in the hands of readers daily, to inform them and to perhaps help to shape their opinions with his information as well. When the editors in Missouri hadn�
��t found him very promising, he blazed his own trail. It was a matter of pride to him that Frank Barton made his own way and made his own rules. Certainly he didn’t need some woman making new ones.
It was well enough for Henry Rogers to have a wife help out at his inn. It was fine for his friend Luke Cameron, the best handyman in Billings, to let his new missus deal with the wool traders and sell the extra produce from their massive garden. Women, he presumed, knew things about vegetables and fruit and about how to make travelers comfortable.
However, he did not need the assistance of some woman in the newspaper business, which was and always would be a man’s domain. He harrumphed to himself as he adjusted a gear and hoped it would last the week. Replacing the gears was a tedium he despised. Perhaps Luke might look in later, as he sometimes did, and Frank could prevail upon his skilled friend to do the repair in a trice.
Satisfied with that plan, he sat down to lay out the ads for the next edition. A widower a few miles out of town advertised for a housekeeper or a bride, in those words exactly. Frank shook his head. The man had better pay a charwoman rather than court a wife. It changed a man, being married.
Why only last week, Henry Rogers had visited in order to advertise his inn. He was talking about someone called Pearl. Frank had mentioned he’d thought Mrs. Rogers was called Leah and Henry had chuckled and said that, no, that was what he called their daughter, their little pearl. Frank had forced himself not to scowl. That had to be the wife’s influence. Any sensible man would’ve given the child one name, which he recalled had been Helen, not Pearl, and used it alone rather than confusing everyone with senseless endearments. The child was likely never to be sure what her proper name was if they carried on giving her foolish nicknames like that.
Irrational creatures, women, and they worked their form of illogical thinking men until nearly all the population of Billings was sentimental and aiming to see himself married off!
He stopped the advertisement layout reluctantly because he needed to attend to the bills for the month. How he loathed sending out invoices and trying to collect advertising fees! He would much prefer to be investigating rumors that the Mountbattens were going to sell up their prosperous farm and move back east where their son had moved. That news would certainly sell a few editions, he reckoned. He’d have to do his billing and search out a few leads later in the day. There were always men at the saloon ready for a gossip, he soothed himself. The rumor wouldn’t go cold in the time it took him to post bills.
Glowering, he took his bills to the post office. He hand delivered the ones in town. But, it didn’t make sense to go traipsing out six miles to someone’s farm to give them a bill, not to mention his advertisers from Helena and even as far as Idaho. He stood in line behind a man sending a parcel which required him to fill out forms and evidently relate a long story about his brother living in Indiana. Frank took out his watch and looked at it a bit ostentatiously.
After he had read all of the wanted placards posted on the wall (and silently corrected their spelling), he cast round for something to occupy his time while the man ahead of him filled out his paper at a glacial pace. More than once it occurred to Frank to take the pencil from the man and insist upon having the man dictate it so Frank could speed up the process. Still, that sort of rashness and impatience was what had made him a dismal prospect to the papers of St. Louis. He liked to think he was a more mature and patient man now.
On the counter by the postmaster’s elbow was a copy of the Matrimonial Times. For lack of any better amusement, he took it up and began to read the advertisements. They were an immediate source of hilarity and he began to wonder why people like the Rogers subscribed to lending libraries when there was such wealth of human folly to divert one in such a periodical as this.
Widower with nine children indeed! Which sort of accomplished young lady did the advertiser hope to entice with the information that he’d already been the death of one wife with so many mouths to feed? Another advertisement insisted that he was a prosperous farmer. Any man west of the Mississippi could decode that to mean he had two cows and a row of corn to his name. Probably the man spent all his time boasting of the fact in the town saloon. A third advertisement characterized himself as stout and fond of fun which was most likely a careful way of that he was fat and lazy. The type of women these ads would attract was hardly one to be wished for in a wife. It was both humorous and a little sad to Frank that there were men who thought they could not get on without a woman.
After he posted bills, Frank returned to the newspaper office to find Luke idling outside the door waiting for him.
“Need a bit of help with your press?”
“What makes you think so?” Frank joked.
“People in Helena telegraphed down at the station because they could hear your string of curses.”
“I’m not so bad, am I?”
“You do seem to think that the machine despises you when it’s only a lot of gears and screws, Frank.”
“If I’m guilty of personification, at least admit it’s uncanny how cruel that press is,” Frank replied.
“It’s got no feelings, Frank. It may have a loose belt or a stripped gear, but it has no feelings. You should be grateful considering the way you talk to it.”
Luke knelt on the floor with his tools and set to work. Frank stood by, glad of a chance to talk with his friend.
“Do you know who Pearl is?” Frank ventured mischievously, testing his theory that wives brought men to the pathetic depths of sentiment.
“Surely I do. She’s Henry and Leah Rogers’ daughter and a fine child she is, too. You ought to hear how well she speaks. Why only the other day, my Tess was saying—”
“Just as I thought. Another man taken leave of his senses.”
“What are you on about now, Franklin Barton?” Luke asked, knowing his friend’s moods.
“Only that just today Mrs. Rogers was in my office bold enough to say I should write to woman in Albany who could be my bride.”
“You mean Charlotte? She’s quite a girl from what Tess tells me. She and Leah had their heads together last night about it. They both think she’d be a match for you and I think it was generous of them to think of you.”
“Why’s that exactly? Because I’m such a lonely, pitiful man?”
“Because you’re not that friendly where women are concerned. When I introduced you to Tess, I think you looked up to say hello and then went on working. When she said how much she enjoyed reading my copy of your paper you said you’d never heard of a woman reading it as there was little in it of interest to ladies. I thought she might give you a piece of her mind when you said that! You sure enough deserved one.”
“I’m a man. I write a man’s paper.”
“Women can read. Most of our teachers are women. It’s time you were caught up to the times! Women concern themselves with what happens in the world and it wouldn’t hurt you to try to court their interest. Put in a ladies’ column with some recipes and increase your readers.”
“I write serious news. I don’t want the fripperies they use for filler in big cities, nonsense about lace, people getting married and having parties. Don't need all that nonsense.”
“A society column isn’t a bad idea either. Glad you thought of it.” Luke winked as he finished up. “For what it’s worth, speaking as a man’s man,” he chuckled, “you’d be a darned fool not to listen to Leah Rogers. She did me the biggest favor of my life when she insisted I read Tess’s letter last year. Write to this girl and see what she has to say. The worst that could happen is she doesn’t like you. So swallow your pride and be a man about it!” Luke clapped him on the back and walked out with a laugh.
Luke may have thought it was funny, but to Frank it was a topic of the utmost seriousness. He took no such discussion lightly. The very idea of writing to some woman from back east who was a reporter already and probably thought she knew everything there was to know about newspapers, made him sweat. This was the las
t thing he needed. His eyes darted to his cluttered desk. The thought rose that if, like Henry Rogers, he had not only a wife but a helpmeet and partner, the labor at the newspaper might be less arduous and the time in his shabby rooms less lonesome and dull. He shook his head.
For a man who’d just thought that the widower outside of town needed a charwoman, not a wife, he was giving the idea of marriage undue consideration. He didn’t think of employing a secretary, or of taking his meals at Mrs. Hostleman’s boarding house. Frank concentrated and thought of expanding his newspaper, possibly an extra page full of society news and recipes, and began to mark down the potential cost and what he would have to charge for the paper daily and by subscription.
Then he thought, fleetingly, unexpectedly, of having someone to talk to: about the news, the gossip, the number of advertisements for property and for men to work on the railroad further west. Frank never considered that someone else might be interested in the things he liked to talk about. No one in Billings was interested in the things he liked to talk about, it seemed.
At the end of the day, he dodged back to his room to comb his hair. He glanced at the looking glass and thought without concern that he needed to shave, perhaps in a day or two, or else decide to grow a beard in earnest. He walked down to the end of the main street and entered Henry Rogers’ inn. Henry himself was at the desk.
“Have you come to eat your crow?” Henry inquired.
“I suppose I have. Luke worked on me,” he said a bit sheepishly.
