CREEK ROAD GANG
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Grandmothers
Virginia Strong Newlin
Creek Road Gang is grateful to Virginia Strong Newlin for allowing us to present "Grandmothers." It is part of a work in process, combining both story and poem.
I never knew my
grandfathers, one committed suicide before my father was born, the
other absconded to a yacht in California. According to my aunt, Mary
Newbold, her father left right before Christmas, leaving her mother
with little money. A small girl, Mary couldn’t understand why all she
got for Christmas were curtains for her bedroom.
I got a Christmas card from my grandfather one time, printed Captain George R. Newbold, and signed your grandpappy. And once he gave me a tin roller coaster with a little red tin car that went loop-the-loop. That was a present, but it didn’t make me know him.
My grandmothers, on the other hand were hard not to know. They were strong, beautiful, and outspoken, although not each other’s very good friend. One came from a plantation on the Roanoke River in North Carolina, the other from a country place in Fox Chase outside of Philadelphia. I’ve written poems about them, which approach the truth, a truth you sometimes don’t find out till you’ve written the poem. It may not be the truth you thought you were writing about. That’s often the way with poetry, you start out with a line and the poem takes off. You hang to its mane, so to speak, yelling whoa or digging in your heels, as needed. After the ride is over, you spend a bunch of time picking mud from the poem’s hoofs or pulling burrs from its tail.
So the poem about my Philadelphia grandmother’s wedding is strongly influenced by its rhymes and pattern and not exactly accurate, but the general conclusion is correct: she lived to repent.
I got a Christmas card from my grandfather one time, printed Captain George R. Newbold, and signed your grandpappy. And once he gave me a tin roller coaster with a little red tin car that went loop-the-loop. That was a present, but it didn’t make me know him.
My grandmothers, on the other hand were hard not to know. They were strong, beautiful, and outspoken, although not each other’s very good friend. One came from a plantation on the Roanoke River in North Carolina, the other from a country place in Fox Chase outside of Philadelphia. I’ve written poems about them, which approach the truth, a truth you sometimes don’t find out till you’ve written the poem. It may not be the truth you thought you were writing about. That’s often the way with poetry, you start out with a line and the poem takes off. You hang to its mane, so to speak, yelling whoa or digging in your heels, as needed. After the ride is over, you spend a bunch of time picking mud from the poem’s hoofs or pulling burrs from its tail.
So the poem about my Philadelphia grandmother’s wedding is strongly influenced by its rhymes and pattern and not exactly accurate, but the general conclusion is correct: she lived to repent.
April 1894
My grandmother's wedding was an event
but her life with a blue-blooded playboy
she lived to repent.
Though a husband like him was not her intent
and what pleasure he brought her could not be called joy
my grandmother's wedding was an event.
The aunts and the uncles were very content,
he was charming and rich and not hoi polloi.
She lived to repent.
In her silks and her laces, the blue garter lent,
beneath the Illusion, she’s blushing and coy.
My grandmother's wedding was an event.
Since he gambled the money away for the rent
and drank as if liquor were all his employ,
she lived to repent.
At last it was ended. By luck she was sent
to find him in bed with a hobbledehoy.
My grandmother's wedding was an event
she lived to repent.
I rather repent writing a snide poem about what was a tragedy in her
life and probably in his. There’s tragedy in a bad marriage, and she
didn’t take it lightly. When he died after many years of separation, I
saw her weep. I remember being touched and surprised that she still
had so much feeling for him.
But then, according to my cousins, grandchildren of his two sisters, he was a charming man: tall and fair. I may have seen a picture of him: a slightly bald, classically-featured man, with a mustache.
There is a story about my grandmother driving the buggy to pick him up at the station when he came from Philadelphia to visit her one winter day. The road was snowy and slippery. The horse fell between the traces and was unable to get up. To prevent him from breaking the buggy apart (and maybe a leg) she plumped herself down on his head. My grandfather is supposed to have told his friends, When nobody arrived to pick me up, I started walking and came upon this beautiful girl in the middle of the road, sitting on a fallen horse’s head and crying.
She was a feeling woman, my Philadelphia grandmother, Ethel Meryweather Newbold. She loved her three daughters, did whatever she could for them, who, by their father’s desertion suddenly became poor girls in a rich rather snobby society, and, by making me feel loveable, she rescued me, the oldest child of her daughter, Ethel, who died young.
My North Carolina grandmother, Sally Hall Strong Battle, struggled too. She grew up on a plantation on the Roanoke River, near a little town called Scotland Neck. Her mother died when she was young, as did my mother, and her father married again, as did my father. She did not think her stepmother was quality, and I never found out she had a stepsister until I rode with the stepsister in the same limousine to my grandmother’s funeral.
My grandmother was widowed before my father was born and raised two small children, with very little money, in an impoverished South. Winter and summer, she made their clothes. Her daughter, Anna, remembered having one of her classmates scrutinize the dress her mother had made and say, Anna Strong, in summer you are lovely, but in winter you are plain home made.
Later on, my grandmother stopped the sewing, put herself through business school, got a job, and bought up cheap property in Raleigh, on Saturdays going down shabby streets to collect the rent.
She married her cousin, Dr. Kemp Battle, had a large house in Raleigh, and a fine garden.
He only lived a year. For the rest of the fifty years of her life, she wore nothing but black.
This poem comes from a conversation I had with an old servant who had known my grandmother as a girl. We talked at a family reunion on the plantation where my grandmother grew up, on the porch of one of the houses of the three Smith brothers who had owned the plantation, her uncle’s house, I think. They are beautiful houses, built before the Civil War, with high ceilings, large doors, dark handmade woodwork, and great circular stairs. One of them, at least, had an outside kitchen, and the old aunt who lived there refused to eat anything cooked inside.
Another house, previously on the property, has been moved and is preserved as an historic house of the State of North Carolina.
The day I visited, the houses were shabby and the grounds run down, but I can imagine them as they looked when my grandmother was a girl.
But then, according to my cousins, grandchildren of his two sisters, he was a charming man: tall and fair. I may have seen a picture of him: a slightly bald, classically-featured man, with a mustache.
There is a story about my grandmother driving the buggy to pick him up at the station when he came from Philadelphia to visit her one winter day. The road was snowy and slippery. The horse fell between the traces and was unable to get up. To prevent him from breaking the buggy apart (and maybe a leg) she plumped herself down on his head. My grandfather is supposed to have told his friends, When nobody arrived to pick me up, I started walking and came upon this beautiful girl in the middle of the road, sitting on a fallen horse’s head and crying.
She was a feeling woman, my Philadelphia grandmother, Ethel Meryweather Newbold. She loved her three daughters, did whatever she could for them, who, by their father’s desertion suddenly became poor girls in a rich rather snobby society, and, by making me feel loveable, she rescued me, the oldest child of her daughter, Ethel, who died young.
My North Carolina grandmother, Sally Hall Strong Battle, struggled too. She grew up on a plantation on the Roanoke River, near a little town called Scotland Neck. Her mother died when she was young, as did my mother, and her father married again, as did my father. She did not think her stepmother was quality, and I never found out she had a stepsister until I rode with the stepsister in the same limousine to my grandmother’s funeral.
My grandmother was widowed before my father was born and raised two small children, with very little money, in an impoverished South. Winter and summer, she made their clothes. Her daughter, Anna, remembered having one of her classmates scrutinize the dress her mother had made and say, Anna Strong, in summer you are lovely, but in winter you are plain home made.
Later on, my grandmother stopped the sewing, put herself through business school, got a job, and bought up cheap property in Raleigh, on Saturdays going down shabby streets to collect the rent.
She married her cousin, Dr. Kemp Battle, had a large house in Raleigh, and a fine garden.
He only lived a year. For the rest of the fifty years of her life, she wore nothing but black.
This poem comes from a conversation I had with an old servant who had known my grandmother as a girl. We talked at a family reunion on the plantation where my grandmother grew up, on the porch of one of the houses of the three Smith brothers who had owned the plantation, her uncle’s house, I think. They are beautiful houses, built before the Civil War, with high ceilings, large doors, dark handmade woodwork, and great circular stairs. One of them, at least, had an outside kitchen, and the old aunt who lived there refused to eat anything cooked inside.
Another house, previously on the property, has been moved and is preserved as an historic house of the State of North Carolina.
The day I visited, the houses were shabby and the grounds run down, but I can imagine them as they looked when my grandmother was a girl.
MISS SALLIE HALL
For the family picnic at Woodstock
Bessie made beaten biscuits.
She was small and brown and crusty
and knew everything that had happened
since my grandmother was a little girl.
“Miss Sallie Hall done climb that pecan tree
in all them petticoats and stayed there.
We hollered at her real loud
and oh how her step mammy done shout.
But Miss Sallie don’t pay her no mind,--
her own sweet momma gone to the promised land.”
“Did she come down at last?” I asked.
“When she got right hungry,
came sneakin‘ in the kitchen.
We black folk fed her good,
glad she were spunky.”
This was a side of Grandmother I didn’t know.
Very proper, I’d always thought her;
until I looked up that pecan tree
and thought I saw her petticoats there.
II
“They married her off to Mr. George,” said Bessie.
“She say she don’t want to marry
that old man, but she gone and done it,
And then don’t he kill hisself,
leavin’a baby (Miss Anna)
and yaw daddy not birthed yet.
She war a fine sight at her weddin’, though,
come down the stairs in her mammy’s weddin’ dress.
Miss Sallie Collins, Miss Sallie Turner
was the bridesmaids,” Bessie said.
I looked at the great circular staircase,
thought I saw a dark-haired, dark eyed
girl standing on the steps,
shy and proud and lonely
but lovely in her white dress,
a loose bouquet of garden flowers in her hands.
My grandmother was a great one for flowers.
She said to me one day
that she never grew any flowers
requiring watering.
If they couldn’t survive the hot, dry
southern summer, too bad.
And that’s the way she handled herself.
* * *
Biography for Virginia Strong Newlin: Over
the years, I’ve been lucky enough to publish some articles, fiction,
biography, and poetry, but as far as that goes, I hit my peak when I
was eight years old with several poems in Springside School’s Chestnut
Burr. Springside School is in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. My two sisters,
my mother, and I all went there. It is in Chestnut Hill, where I grew
up, that this poem-autobiography is set.
Your editor, Kate Lydon, and I share the joys and laughter and surprising insight of being writers and poets together.
Your editor, Kate Lydon, and I share the joys and laughter and surprising insight of being writers and poets together.
