A Tenderfoot Bride by Clarice E. Richards

 

This memoir, composed in 1920, tells the tale of Mrs. Richards and her husband Owen, Easterners, who decided to go West and run a ranch in the Colorado of 1900.

Her penetrating eye limns the contrasts between two lifestyles better than mere observers of the literature.

Here we have a wise intelligent woman who had lived in one Life [the Eastern Way] and then plunged whole-heartedly into another Life of a different, more vital timbre [The Western.]

To Mrs. Richards, the West was not just a region, but an entire state of mind.

Allow me to remove myself while Mrs. Richards testifies for herself.

[On the rough men she met upon arrival West. Keep in mind, she came from polite Eastern society, and yet here…]

I was becoming very much interested. This man was a distinctly new type to me. I did not know then that he was the old-time cowpuncher, with an ease of manner a Chesterfield might have envied, and an unfailing, almost deferential, courtesy toward women.

[There is no higher praise in comportment than to be compared to Chesterfield.]

[The next lengthy passage really gets to the meat of what makes the Western mind different.]

“For East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The phrase kept haunting me all through these first days when everything was so new and strange. I almost felt as though I had passed into a new phase of existence….

 The compelling reality of this new life affected me deeply. Non-essentials counted for nothing. There were no artificial problems or values.

No one in the country cared who you might have been or who you were. The Mayflower and Plymouth Rock meant nothing here. It would be thought you were speaking of some garden flowers or some breed of chickens.

The one thing of vital importance was what you were-- how you adjusted yourself to meet conditions as you found them, and how nearly you reached, or how far you fell below their measure of man or woman.

I felt as though up to this time I had been in life's kindergarten, but that I had now entered into its school, and I realized that only as I passed the given tests should I succeed.

I learned much from the rough, untutored men with whom I was in daily association. They were men whose rules of conduct were governed by individual choice, unhampered by conventions. They were so direct and honest, so unfailingly kind and gentle toward any weaker thing, and so simple and responsive, that I liked and trusted them from the first.

·        An association based upon ability or at least the gumption to try.

·        Assigned identity means nothing, be you Lord, Lady, Aristocrat, Commoner, or any identity label we apply today.

·        You were judged and valued for what you did or waded into to or attempted to do.

·        Labels, titles, pronouns, certificates…all paper dolls to the squared away.

Ranch life might be difficult; It was never commonplace. The mere sight of a lone horseman on a distant hill suggested greater possibilities of excitement than a multitude of people in a city street.

·        Streets, screens, movie theater crowds—predictable.

·        Not the case with who you meet in areas where it is hard to get to.

·        Personally, I have met many an intriguing cat on backcountry outings, standing in the pit at demolition derbies, waiting my turn to plunge a rapid, generally anyplace that most don’t go.

·        If you are where it is uncommon to go, those you meet will be uncommon souls.

[The next, a lesson in facing life, and then facing it again—no need for back pats or commemorative t-shirts. The reward is the act and the satisfaction garnered for the next round of life experience.]

Should the horse rear and throw himself backward, there is the greatest danger that the man may be caught under him and killed, it happens so quickly, but these quiet, diffident chaps are absolutely fearless, past masters in the art of riding, facing death each time they ride a new horse, but facing it with the supreme courage of the commonplace, sitting calmly in the saddle, racked, shaken, jolted until at times the blood streams from their nose, yet after a short rest the rider “took up the next one” quite as though nothing at all had happened.

[Men and Woman of Courtesy & Chivalry, but…a little bit of Outlaw to the Soul—My cuppa!]

It was an unusual experience to live in daily association with these men, in whom were combined characteristics of the Knights of the Round Table and those peculiar to the followers of Jesse James.

[The world is levelled and we only raise another by dint of ability.]

Strange, contrasting personalities—in awe of nobody, quite as ready to converse familiarly with the President as with Owen, but probably preferring Owen because they knew he was a fine horseman.

[In the next lengthy bit, Mrs. Richards expounds on ethics, philosophy, and religion as she saw it there.]

Improvident and generous, however great their vices might be, their lives were free from petty meanness; the prairies had seemed to

“Give them their own deep breadth of view

The largeness of the cloudless blue.” [Lucretius]

The religion of the cow puncture? My impression was that he had none, for certainly he subscribed to no conventional creed or dogma. Yet what was it that gave him a code of honor which made cheating or a lie an unforgivable offense and a man guilty of either an outcast scorned by his associates, and what was it that would have made him go without bread or shelter that a woman or child might not suffer?

Rough and gentle, brutal and tender, good and bad, not angel at one time and devil at another, but rather saint and sinner at the same time.  Little of religious influence came into his life, and as for bibles--- there were none.

[Her sister Alice came to visit with her new husband in tow—a bonafide “Dude” of almost stereotypical fashion. The contrast between this man [lower case “m”] and the Men of the Weast is, well, a bit withering. To be candid, we must ask ourselves—How do we measure stacked against Upper case Men?]

During the drive back to the ranch I thought of Alice and her future by the side of a man of that type. Our [hers and Owen’s] future was uncertain enough, but if trouble and vicissitudes were our portion, at least I had someone with whom to share them.

[Calls to mind Steinbeck’s observation on men often growing more whiny and complaining as they age. “My wife married a man; I see no reason why should inherit a baby.”]

Unless we chanced to have guests come for weeks at a time the only women I saw were those in our employ, but I resented having any of my friends think of my life as “dull” or “lonely.” On the contrary it was fascinating, full of incident, rich in experience which money could not buy. Living so close to the great heart of nature during those years in the planes, the vision of life partook of their breadth and a new sense of values replaced old, artificial standards.  To be alone in the vast prairie was to gain a new conception of infinity and--eternity.

[The next on the diversity of those who went West, and decided to raise up to what it is to be a Westerner. One must not be born there to adopt the full-throated way of life.]

There was nothing prosaic about those who group themselves around the great stone fireplaces on the ranches in the old days. Here again were found those contrasts, so striking and unexpected; university men who had come West for adventure or investment, men of wealth whose predisposition to weak lungs had sent them in exile to the wilderness, modest young Englishmen, those younger sons so often found in the most out of-the-way corners of the earth, and who, through the sudden demise of a near relative, has such a startling way of becoming earls and lords overnight; adventurous Scotchmen, brilliant young Irishmen, all smoking contentedly there in the firelight discussing the “isms” and “ogies” and every other subject under heaven. But most interesting of all were their own reminiscences.

[All the philosophies, politics, et cetera of the world could be offered, but nothing matched the reminiscences, the lived experience. Perhaps we spend too much time in abstraction and not enough “get out there” living bumps and bruises to have reminiscences worthy to share around a ranch’s stone fireplace. May that not be true for us. Sad for us if it is.]

In the East life seems to be static. But in the West it is in a state of flux and conditions are constantly changing.

[In a truly lived life, more things occur and change than in our newsfeed.]

[Towards the end of the volume she offers the below, a more fitting prescription for living I can not fathom.]

From the vast spaces, under the guardianship of that commanding summit, we had gained a new sense of proportion, freedom from hampering trivialities and a broader vision of life and its responsibilities.

May we all learn from Mrs. Richards and get out there and live, gain a new sense of proportion and freedom from hampering trivialities and a broader vision of life and its responsibilities.

I simply adore this book.