Friday, July 29, 2011

Frank Sadler to Rosa Northcutt (Morgan), June 30, 1936 -- "will you think of me as a nice fellow?"


Murray and Frank Sadler were best friends from 5th grade on. Frank's mother was a widow and had to work, and Murray had his own floor at the parsonage at 4th and "I" streets, where he and Frank enjoyed many an hour of unsupervised freedom. In old age, Frank told me that they had been drawn together because they were both bookish kids and because they had each lost a parent. Adda Laine Morgan died when Murray was 16, and before that was immersed in her ministry and other projects, leaving most of his care to the housekeeper. 

In adolescence, they also bonded over boxing. Murray was an ardent fan and Frank fought professionally during high school and college. He used an assumed name, first to fool and later to spare his mother, and also because he feared that "nice girls," of whom my mom was certainly one, wouldn't accept him if they knew. When she was seventeen and Murray was traveling in Europe with his father, Frank wrote her this confession. 


Frank Sadler, with and without Murray

Dear Rosa: 

This is an apologia.

I put my name on the envelope for your benefit--that you might not be misled into opening it. From that point on it is your own doing. I used no subterfuge.

I want to apologize for--maybe even justify--the unfortunate incidents that might have caused you to scratch my name from your roll-call des amis. In the first place I think to highly of you to let our friendship slip into oblivion. I would say the same thing to my best pass--Murray-boy. I love him as I would a brother--and much as I haven’t shown it--you just as much as a sister.

I think you know the instance of which I am afraid. Murray told me that you had discovered--as, unfortunately for me, the wrong people do--my infamous pastime. It is a pastime which people of a nice set, like my mother, you and others, probably call brutal, atavistic and degrading. When Murray told me, I thought that you would probably shudder a bit in disgust and absolve our friendship at once. Was I wrong? I think perhaps I was. I couldn’t help thinking along those lines, however, for that has been the case in the past. Masculine friends, good or bad, wouldn’t desert me; but the nicer type of girl--the kind I really admire, have often looked quite askance when my secret, which started with Murray, is revealed. 

It is my desire that you look upon this activity of mine as an outlet for boyish energy and an appearance, perhaps too strongly, of a love of physical competition as well as for the filthy lucre and publicity. Will you still, in the face of everything, think of me as a nice fellow who can still prove he has a set of ideals worthy of your and Murray’s friendship? I hope that my worrying over this little matter is but the workings of a mind biased though experience. I hope there has been no estrangement at all in your mind. But, just to ease my own thoughts--you will consider what I have written?

I hope you are enjoying life to the utmost this summer. If you should happen to be in Seattle at some time, you have my sincerest invitation to visit me--and to enjoy a beautiful day on Lake Washington in the boat. 

We both know Murray is having the time of his life--and I surely hope that he writes you as frequently and as faithfully this summer as he did when but forty miles away from you.
                                                                                                                       
 Yours,
                                                                                                                           
 quite thoughtfully,
                                                                                                                                  Frank

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Murray to Rosa, 1938 -- "I wish I knew what to do"

Murray left the Grays Harbor Washingtonian after a year and went to work for the Seattle Municipal News, the publication of the Seattle Municipal League. In August, he became the League's secretary, directing their candidate evaluations. The job brought him back to Seattle, and closer to Rosa, but he chafed at office politicking and the loss of freedom to organize his own time.

July 13, 1938

I wish I knew what to do, my pet. I'd like to travel, but I'd have to have a job and I wouldn't want to travel that way because it would take me away from you. I miss you so darn much just being this far away. And I'd like to go back to school just for the sake of learning more. And I'd like to be on a paper again for the sake of a job with companionship and less responsibilities, but I know that I would rebel again at taking orders at slanting news, etcetera. And I'd like to get a weekly paper somewhere, but I hate the gamble and am not sure enough of my knowledge of printing. If it were only the writing that one had to worry about. So I'm all undecided and restless.

July 14, 1938

...Did you ever read Whitman, hon? I've tried several times in years past to wade into him, but the man's colossal egotism has always gotten in the way. I started again this morning, on the street car going down town ... and I really got something out of it. For instance,

...

Whitman the shaggy hero

Beginning My Studies

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,

The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the sense, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

For the first time I've had the idea that Dad's shaggy hero is talking to me.

...

One compensation of a new job in a more prosperous city was more money, most of which he spent on books and records. In October he won $18.80 in a dice game and spent it on "a whole flock of books that I've been really wanting but, since they are classics, have neglected to buy": Paradise Lost, Dante, Dialogues of Plato, Shakespeare, Ambrose Bierce's "In the Midst of Life," Romaine Rolland's "Jean Christophe." "Hon, they're just beautiful." A few days later he used another windfall to buy recordings of Sibelius and Haydn. And in December he announced the acquisition of Vernon Lewis Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought, all three volumes for $6.70.

Checking in with his friends still in college, he found Depression era financial worries beginning to be superseded by the fear of war.

Sept. 27, 1938

Dearest Nun:

My little office radio is sure coming in for use these days. People from all over the building have gathered in here to hear the Hitler and Chamberlain speeches the last couple of days. I wish that you could have listened in, pet. The contrast between the talks of the two men was probably as impressive as the Praha speech we heard last Friday. Hitler sounded like a wounded animal most of the time -- he snarled and screamed and sometimes whimpered. The English prime minister, on the other hand, had a Milquetoast voice and his understatements were comparable to those of Steinbeck or Hilton. "I found Mr. Hitler's stand most unreasonable."

Seattle people whom I have been talking to are pretty worried. They all think that we're cinch to get into the mess if it boils over, and the kids out at the fraternity were all talking nervously about "That hideout in the Olympics." Hell, they could have a fraternity row 50 miles in from Quinault if they all lived up to their "I'll ditch" promises.

His own response to a likely future as a soldier was carpe diem. He quit his job at the Municipal League, having confirmed his suspicion that he was not suited to organizational life, and dove into research on European history, kayaking, and architecture. He decided to travel, hoping to establish himself as a freelancer. Rosa always said that his marriage proposal consisted of an announcement that he had bought an extra ticket on a freighter headed for Europe, in case she wanted to come. He did give her at least a month's notice, writing on Feb. 1, 1939, that "This idea of quitting one job and getting married without the prospect of another is so beautifully unorthodox that I like it for that reason alone, as well as for romantic ones."

They were married in Murray's dad's church on March 5, with HVM presiding, and left the same day. Since their 10 a.m. sailing meant an 8 a.m. ceremony and little time for chat, Murray and Rosa planned for just the immediate family. But Henry Victor invited the whole church and most of them not only showed up but followed them to dockside. Rosa wore a blue suit and Murray, of course, brought along his typewriter. They traveled on the Norwegian freighter Heranger. Murray had already made two sea trips to Europe. Rosa had never been east of Spokane or south of Oregon.