Old News had goats on the brain last week and missed a chance to mention that, 100 years before, De Rosey Carroll Cabell Sr. of Sebastian (or Franklin) County was promoted to major general and put in charge of the U.S. Army border patrol at San Antonio.
Whether he was born at Fort Smith, as some sources say, or Charleston as the Arkansas Gazette reported, I prefer to think of Cabell as the short man who inspired a weird legend:
In 1880 when he arrived at West Point to enter the military academy, he learned there was a height requirement and he didn't meet it. So he thunked himself on the top of his head until his scalp swelled, and thus he matriculated.
That, anyway, is what the Arkansas Gazette reported 100 years ago last week.
One hundred years ago today, other war legends were being born: Sgt. Alvin York single-handedly took out a German gun nest, capturing 132 prisoners. Meanwhile, a disheartened T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") was moping angrily around Damascus.
Google "October 1918." See all that war information? Good. Remember where you saw it so we can talk about something else.
Like Mr. and Mrs. Dolph Bush. Oh, my.
On Oct. 8, 1918, the Gazette reported on an Arkansas Supreme Court decision:
That Dolph Bush, after having separated from his wife, Laura Bush, after he had charged her with an offense which was a statutory ground for divorce, and had returned her to the home of her parents, and thereafter had gone to his wife and effected a reconciliation and agreed upon a resumption of their marital relations, which agreement was set aside by him immediately upon her return to their home, at the instigation of his brother, and over the protest of his wife, is estopped to be allowed to assert the statutory ground for divorce, his action in effecting the reconciliation amounting to a condonation of the alleged offense.
Get that? I needed a few passes. It helps to read the court opinion. Here's a shortcut to the American Law Reports volume that includes the case: arkansasonline.com/108wife.
Adolph Bush, a farmer in Lawrence County near Alicia, married Laura Covington in December 1914 and they had a baby girl. According to the high court, Dolph's "conduct toward his wife was overbearing and intolerant and at some times brutal."
He admitted that he would have returned her to her parents soon after they married — had he been able to take her back "in as good shape as he found her." But he couldn't, because she got pregnant. Or because he beat her, on one occasion with a bed slat.
In May 1917, Laura's father warned Dolph that she was writing to a former sweetheart, one Swan, and rumor had it they were re-involved.
The ruling states that Laura wrote to this Swan twice, addressing him as "Dear boy" and "Dear old boy" but not hiding the letters, which were not sealed. Also, they had met twice, at church and at the gate of the Bush home — when Dolph was away.
This was evidence enough of adultery for the Chancery Court in Lawrence County, which does not surprise. The surprise in this story is that a young farm wife in 1918 had the resources or the backing to fight her cruel husband in court.
After dumping her on her parents, Dolph visited Laura. He spent two nights there, in her room. She said they resumed marital relations then; he said they didn't. Either way, he took her home with him.
Where his brother — who was helping Dolph with his crops — refused to stay in the house with her there.
The high court opined that Dolph decided to divorce Laura not because she had done anything wrong but because he didn't want to lose his brother's labor.
So the question was whether Dolph's avowed reconciliation with Laura at her parents' house — if they had no intercourse there — amounted to an official condoning of her conduct that negated his claim of adultery. The high court ruled that intercourse was not required for couples to reconcile. He had no grounds for divorce.
There was only so much the law could do to help an abused wife in 1918, but at least she couldn't be falsely branded as faithless as an agricultural expedient.
The Bushes show up in the news again Sept. 9, 1920, when Dolph shot a man at the Jernigan Sanitarium on West 14th Street in Little Rock, where Laura was having some kind of operation.
From ads and news stories, we know Dr. A.W. Jernigan was a surgeon. But there's no way to know what he treated Laura for.
We do know that she was in her hospital bed when Dolph looked out the window and noticed one Walter Connier, a black man, looking up at the building. Dolph pulled out his revolver and yelled. Bush later said that "the prowler" started to run, so he shot him.
Connier said Bush shot him, striking his thigh, and then he ran away, meanwhile crying out that he was looking for the hospital where he had a job. Connier said he had accidentally taken the wrong streetcar on his way to work at some hospital — the Democrat suggested it was St. Vincent Infirmary.
Jernigan treated his wound, and the police took Connier. A court fined Connier $100 plus costs and sentenced him to three months on the county farm for attempting to commit a felony.
MAYBE HIS FEET HURT
The Gazette and Democrat were full of shoe ads in October 1918.
Shoes for women were of course absurd. But the depictions of even men's models suggest their designers had never seen a human foot. No, that's unfair. Designers must have looked at feet at least once, because we know they discovered the existence of right and left ones in the 19th century.
Buyers who could pay had many options, including healthier ones. Pfeifer's at Sixth and Main streets in Little Rock advertised the Educator Shoe. Manufactured by Rice & Hutchins, a 52-year-old firm based in Boston, the Educator had a capacious, boxy toe.
But with leather in demand for the Army, too many options were available at too many price points to suit the War Industries Board. The board imposed three classifications of shoe with quality standards and set price points. Also, the number of styles on the market would drop from about 650 to 150, and no more two-colored or other fancy models of footwear could be designed until after the war.
Here's the Oct. 3, 1918, Gazette:
Class A: from $9 to $12; class B: $6 to $8.50; and class C, $3 to $5.50. ... While it is possible to purchase a shoe for $3 now, under the new schedule the shoe at that price will be of higher grade.
State Councils of Defense would police shoe prices, which would be posted on shop windows.
Time was allowed for retailers to get rid of their current stock at current prices, and so the newspapers of October 1918 advertised a bounty of shoe sales.
If only the flu-stricken populace had been able to limp downtown to shop.
Email:
cstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 10/08/2018