The Wisest Girl in Town and Other Stories (Illustrated)

By Thyra Samter Winslow and L. B. Harlowe

A collection of forgotten author Thyra Samter Winslow's earlier work, focusing on love, small town life and what it meant to be a woman living in the first part of the 20th century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Viking Funeral Press
• Release date: Jan 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9788827559819

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THE WISEST GIRL IN TOWN AND OTHER STORIES (ILLUSTRATED)

by Thyra Samter Winslow

All of the stories in this collection are in the public domain.

The collection itself is copyrighted 2017, Viking Funeral Press.

The illustrations used are either licensed under a Creative Commons license or are in the public domain themselves.

The Wisest Girl in Town and Other Stories

By Thyra Samter Winslow

Biography

Thyra Samter Winslow, born in either 1893 or 1885, depending on the source, grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, which colored and informed many of her stories, as well as her later move to the big city.

Her childhood in a small town provided background for her view of small towns as prejudiced, hypocritical, and suffocating places, Ethel Simpson wrote in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

According to U.S. Census data, Forth Smith, in Sebastian County, had a population of 11,311 in 1890, 11,587 in 1900 and 23,975 in 1910.

She was born to Sara Harris Samter and Louis Samter. Her father operated a dry-goods store and her family belonged to the Jewish Community in the little town.

By 1907, she was writing a column in the society pages of the Fort Smith Southwest American.

She went to the Missouri School of Journalism, although how long she stayed is not clear.

Simpson refers to Samter Winslow's time at the collage as brief and notes that she moved back to Fort Smith.

(She) later moved to Chicago where she worked as a chorus girl, actor, and dancer—experiences she depicts in her novel Show Business (1926), Joan Moelis Rappaport wrote in the Jewish Women's Archive encyclopedia entry for Samter Winslow. Finally Samter secured a position as a feature writer with the Chicago Tribune from 1915 to 1916.

Smith wrote that she went to Chicago in 1909 and, in 1912, married John Seymour Winslow. Sometime in 1927, the couple divorced and she married Nelson Waldorf Hyde in December of that same year.

She would separate from him shortly after marrying him, but would not divorce him until 1938.

The couple separated soon afterward, though they remained married for ten years, Simpson wrote.

The complete biography was written by Richard Winegard as a doctoral dissertation and only exists in paper and microfiche forms at the University of Arkansas.

She was restless, witty, independent, shrewd, kind, utterly mendacious, and sometimes completely dishonorable, and yet she is remembered most for her charm, he wrote, based on her own statements, public records and interviews with people who knew her in Fort Smith.

H. L. Mecken, the long-time editor of The Smart Set discovered Samter Winslow, according to his own autobiography and biographies of him.

"The discovery of new writers was a specialty of The Smart Set, and it included a roster of such impressive names as Thyra Samter Winslow, whose first story appeared in Mencken and (George Jean) Nathan's first number, and Ruth Suckow," Marion Elizabeth Rodgers wrote in Mencken: The American Iconoclast.

Mencken and Nathan became the editors of The Smart Set.

Fred Hobson, in Mencken: A Life wrote that he had high regard for the stories of two of his discoveries: Samter Winslow and Lilith Benda, also known as Lucia Bronder.

"Winslow, an ex-chorus girl sometimes called 'Siren Thyra,' he regarded so highly that she appeared more often in The Smart Set than anyone except Mencken and Nathan themselves in the years they were editors."

Mencken wrote in his autobiography that Winslow made her debut in the 1914 edition with her story The Case of Lou Terry, (not included in this collection).

He introduces Winslow Samter and Benda as discoveries and Jewesses who became standbys during the first years of the Nathan-Mencken Smart Set.

Samter Winslow and Benda, who would commit suicide at a relatively young age and has almost no recognition today, are seemingly intrinsically linked in Mencken's mind.

It was apparent instantly that both (Samter Winslow and Benda) were smart girls, with a lot in them that would be useful to us, and I accordingly arranged meetings with them at the office, he wrote. No two women could have been more unlike in manner and appearance.

Mencken described Samter Winslow as being short and chunky, with the ingratiating smile of a child and a voice full of the accents of her native Arkansas.

He wrote that she showed a great deal less psychological finesse than Benda and her writing was inferior.

She had something in abundance that Benda lacked altogether, and that was humor, he wrote.

Mencken described her as no shrinking violet and wrote of her marriage to John Seymour Winslow, for a Jewish girl of her background, must have seemed a swell husband.

John Winslow was the son of the chief justice of Wisconsin.

Mencken wrote that she was a chorus girl in her teens in Chicago and had been writing for a few years before he discovered her.

Around 1918, the Winslows moved to New York, where she contributed regularly to Smart Set through 1923, Simpson wrote. "After Mencken and Nathan left Smart Set, Winslow continued to write for other magazines, including Century, American Mercury, Cosmopolitan, and Redbook. She wrote for The New Yorker, then a new magazine of the Jazz Age, including many pieces about Arkansas in 'Talk of the Town.' A collection, Picture Frames, was published in 1923."

Samter Winslow wrote for The New Yorker starting in 1927 and ending in 1941.

Doubleday published My Own, My Native Land, stories of hers that appeared in The New Yorker.

Following the success of this work, she went to Hollywood to write the screenplay for She Married Her Boss, starring Claudette Colbert and Ronald Colman, Simpson wrote. She remained there adapting stories for other films until 1937, when she returned to New York and continued writing for popular women’s magazines. She also wrote diet books, including Think Yourself Thin (1951). Her literary output diminished in the last years of her life, and she wrote 'true confessions' for pulp magazines and drama reviews for Gotham Guide, a weekly handout for tourists.

Moelis Rappaport claimed that she also worked as a screenwriter for Columbia, RKO, Warner Brothers and NBC, spending her time between California and New York.

In 1961, she was paralyzed following a fall. She was hospitalized until she died on Dec. 2, 1961.

According to an article in the Ottawa Journal, on Nov. 13, 1961, Samter has taken a turn for the worst and is on the critical list (at the hospital).

Her funeral was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York—she had converted to Catholicism during her last illness—and she is buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester County, New York, Simpson wrote.

Critical reception

Simpson wrote that her stories showed local American color and realism.

Many stories expose the hypocrisy, prejudice, and carefully maintained social structures of both small town and urban life, she wrote. She was particularly adept at portraying women of every social class, often in an unfavorable light. Money, especially the pursuit of it as a means to happiness or status, is an important theme throughout her work.

Simpson likened the spare journalistic style to Ernest Hemmingway.

She flourished in the age of popular magazines with their constant demand for fiction. As those magazines declined, the market for Winslow’s work died away, Simpson wrote.

Moelis Rappaport described Samter Winslow's work as internally inconsistent.

When considered together, Winslow’s fictional works comprise a loose and fragmented scrapbook of women’s struggles and choices, she wrote. While she glamorizes marriage as a means to happiness, she often parts the curtains of social convention, revealing troubled inner lives. Beneath their decorum and 'soft blond exteriors,' many of her characters—both country and city women—harbor feelings of anger, boredom, and oppression, and even thoughts of suicide.

Happy endings, where poor country girls marry rich city men are tinged with a hollow, ambiguous quality.

The lack of Jewish characters indicates Winslow’s desire to assimilate into American high society."

Winslow portrays the urge to assimilate and achieve social and economic success in modern American urban life, she wrote. At the same time, she offers a window into the emotional dilemmas accompanying this quest for cosmopolitan sophistication and prosperity.

How I saved by husband

Originally published in The Smart Set

April 1916

Vol. 48, No.4

This is the story of how I saved my husband. I saved him from being a social and business failure. I have never told this before. It is hard to tell now. Perhaps it may show others what a woman will stand without letting the world know and what she will go through to save her husband.

I was young when I met Breckenridge. Of course his real name is far more ordinary. Isn’t it just like a husband to have an ordinary name? I was only twenty and I had only been out three years — short years of innocent girlhood pleasures, dinners, thés dansants, tangos, musical comedies, modern dramas, house parties, after-theater parties. My girlhood had been quiet, secluded. I had been abroad only four times. I was unused to the world. I hardly ever drank enough to become intoxicated; in fact, sometimes I didn’t taste a single cocktail for two days at a time, and I liked only a few kinds of wine and smoked only a few brands of cigarettes. Even now, I never smoke before breakfast. So you see how innocent I was, how sheltered, how unable to cope with the world.

I met Jam — I mean Breckenridge — at a dinner. He had just got back from four years in the West with some sort of a mining company, I believe. He is still with mining or bonds or something. I can’t remember the details. Business is a bore, isn’t it? There was no one to warn me. My Mamma had just married for the third time and she and my new Papa-in-law were away on their honeymoon. If they had been there to warn their little girl! But they weren’t.

My hostess whispered to me, just before we went in to dinner, Marian, I am putting you with Breckenridge Cunningham (Cunningham isn’t his name either). He’s just got home. Has a lot of money. She meant well, but she didn’t know the sort of a man he was, I am sure.

Breckenridge bored me with his tales of the West, but because I had been well brought up I pretended to listen. He didn’t know about my sort of life, my simple little pleasures. That should have warned me. But it didn’t. I just knew he was good looking and single and had money and I remembered that I had been out three years. How innocent I was!

Our courtship lasted three months. My dear Mamma got back from her honeymoon and hurried things up a bit. We were married in January and had a beautiful wedding and everyone said I looked lovely, though the newspaper pictures of me were horrid. The papers used the snapshots their old photographers took, even after we sent down perfectly good pictures, taken especially. We went South and had rather a nice time, though I don’t like the mixed crowds at the Beach and made up my mind never to go again, though one must go some place in winter.

During our courtship I had noticed that Breckenridge was not like other men. On our honeymoon this feeling grew stronger. Back in New York, it continued to grow.

First, he objected to my smoking. I thought he was just a silly, trying to be funny, but I found out he meant it. He didn’t think it was right for women to smoke. Imagine! Next, he said things about drinking. It was after the Hunt Club ball. I had been having quite a good time with Ralphie Dwyer. We always had played around a bit together. Well, I did take a few drinks at the Hunt Club ball. I’ll admit it. They had adorable things to drink. And I knew what I was doing all the time.

The next day Breckenridge scolded me, actually. He said that I had been drunk and had acted awfully and that Ralphie had carried me out to the car. Breckenridge said that my conduct was terrible, that his wife had to act differently, that I had to be quieter and stop cutting up with Ralphie, that people would talk, that — oh, I can’t go over it all, even now. But he treated me, actually, as if I had been a grocer’s wife.

That was the beginning. The next thing happened at supper, after the theater. One of the men was telling something about a girl, and then Breckenridge, my husband, turned to him and said, so that just anyone could hear, Isn’t it rather — questionable, all this? I tried to live, before I was married, so as to be worthy of some good woman. Now I shall try, at least, to be true to her.

I think those were exactly his words! I could hardly believe it. Everything went black before my eyes. My husband, to say a thing like that! Such taste! With Henry Delrose and Dick Lombard and Ralphie in the crowd! No wonder people stopped talking and looked at us both. The silence was awful. Everyone tried to change the subject but the party broke up. I never was so humiliated in my life. There was nothing I could do. I had been married less than a year. I didn’t want a divorce — and yet — things like that —

It went on. Breckenridge objected to bridge playing for money. He objected to afternoon dances in the cafes. He didn’t like my new clothes, though they were extremely good. Thin girls can look modest in a lot of things that fat women can’t even try on.

He didn’t like my new clothes, though they were extremely good. Thin girls can look modest in a lot of things that fat women can’t even try on.

Then, one night, Breckenridge came to me, after dinner. I knew that something was going to happen, for all through dinner he was silent. He was, and still is, the kind of man who can’t talk when the butler is around. We were in the library.

Marian, he said, I love you!

Like that — I love you, as if we were engaged or at a farce or something. Bad taste! But that was not all — nearly.

Marian, he went on, I want to take you away from here, away from this frivolous crowd. I want to take you West, to Colorado, where things are clean. We can have a home and servants and cars there. You’ll have comforts. But we can have sunlight and friends — and children.

Children! Just as if I were the postman’s wife. Of course, children are nice, when you’re older — that is, pretty ones — and you can arrange to have their nurse bring them in at teatime and have them taught little foreign curtsies. It’s really cute! But I’ve never been strong and Breckenridge hasn’t enough money to make it necessary that we keep up the family. But to announce it that way — crude! To go West and have sunlight and children! And to Colorado, where the styles are months old and where they never have good shows and where no one knows the new dances until they aren’t — and sunlight isn’t good for my complexion. I tried to explain. But I knew, then, how he felt. I knew the kind of man I had married!

Others noticed Breckenridge’s actions. The men at the clubs avoided him. I could tell that. Little laughing groups straightened up when he joined and talked war or business. His business associates didn’t understand him. He never took anyone out but me and he was hurt, actually hurt, if I went with anyone but him. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go for advice. My Mamma was still pretty busy, and besides, I couldn’t confess even to her my shame and humiliation. It was something I had to work out myself. I still remember the sadness of those days.

Then, suddenly, the solution came to me. If I could get Breckenridge interested in some other woman! If he would only quit caring for me with that, funny, middle-class affection! That was it. I looked around our crowd. None of the girls was very charming. Not a single vamp in the crowd.

Then I thought of Lola De Frey. She was a dancer at one of the cafes. I never thought much of her, a coarse sort, with a funny round face and touched-up, reddish hair. She wore wild, expensive clothes, odd furs and funny jewels. The men were crazy over her. That was the main thing. So, though it was against my will, I sacrificed my finer feelings, my delicacy, to save my husband. I met Lola. I went with her. I asked her to my home. I introduced her to Breckenridge. At first he didn’t care for her. He seemed to avoid her. I planned and waited. I had a house party and invited Lola and some of the old crowd. I watched and hoped and waited.

Finally, I saw my little plan work out. I had known that Lola could win. Gradually, I saw my old-fashioned husband unbend to her. He danced with her. They spent hours on the balcony. I knew that Lola had charm, even if I couldn’t see what it was. My little plan succeeded as I had dared hope. Breckenridge fell in love with her.

The others in the crowd never knew, never suspected. I had to stand their talk, that perhaps I had not been able to hold my husband. What did I care for their talk? My husband was saved! He soon took his place among men. He did things other men did. His club friends liked him. His business acquaintances treated him as an equal. Today he is a popular man.

Lola? I do not know what became of her. Breckenridge has fallen in love with other women since. He dances, he plays cards. He does