The Log Cabin Lady

And who is this Log Cabin Lady anyway? I never even heard of this book until today as I sit here rummaging through the detritus of yesteryear. It is not clear from the pages of her book whether this woman actually existed or whether the book is carefully constructed or deconstructed to conceal the author's true identity. Just because a diplomat's wife wrote to the editor of the Delineator telling her life story to help future young American women learn the importance of avoiding painfully embarrassing social gaffes whenever they go overseas, that does not connect her to me. After all, I am not my own grandma. It was my Grandma McClellan née Strickland who wrote to the May Delineator, a woman's magazine of the day, in response to some offer of personality analysis based on facial characteristics in a photograph no longer available because not attached to the faded letter, but her forecast was not that great in terms of future professional achievements, according to the editor of the May Delineator who kindly mailed the photograph back to her. Perhaps if my grandmother had been married to the incredibly wealthy Bostonian gentleman (only his first name "Tom" is given) who swept the author off her feet in the library and took her on diplomatic adventures to Great Britain, France, Austria and other parts of Europe, witnessing firsthand there the events of World War I, then perhaps my grandmother's travel forecast might have taken her to more important locales than just Central America. After all, Tom calls his wife "lovely" so that was enough to ensure her in to an audience with Queen Victoria. As the Log Cabin Lady says, "Motherhood is the great and natural event in the life of a woman in France, and no one makes a secret of it." What does that say about motherhood in America? Perhaps that you can run but you can't hide. They know who you are and what you've been up to.