JD: [Looking at article by Julia Adams, "The Serious Young Speak Up]. I don't believe I wrote it. I wish I had written it because I agree with it.
WT: I seem to have found a lot of ideas you have expressed, either in your writing or in our previous talks, in here. Were your Davis aunts and grandmother active in the suffrage movement?
JD: Well, not very, because it wasn't very active in our area [Clarksburg]. You'd have had to get up and wave a flag all alone from the front porch. My grandmother certainly thought it was a shame she didn't have a vote. I've a wonderful letter from her to my father, when he was expressing doubts about running for congress. Maybe it was even when he was running for the legislature (it was when he was quite young). She said "Mud will be thrown at you but it won't stick," because he hadn't done anything to make it stick. And "You have to expect that and ignore it." And then finally at the end of it she put this little twist in. She said "You have my vote." [laughs] Which of course she didn't have.
WT: One thing I haven't seen reference to in your works is that, with all of the political life your father was into, there were several very strong, very talented Davis women who certainly were capable of exercising their judgment to vote even though they didn't have the right to vote.
JD: Oh yes. My grandmother was one of the most brilliant women I've ever met. What she would have been today I don't know, but it would have been something formidable.
WT: Would they have been what the woman writing the article in 1928 characterized as feminists?
JD: Then I'm sure I didn't write it. This sounds a little bit like my writing. I thought I might have written it. I don't remember everything I wrote.
WT: This is something that struck a note and wanted to talk to you about. This woman appears to be saying that, in 1928, her generation (which is your generation) was heir to the efforts of their mothers and grandmothers, the results of the suffrage movement. And that they were being criticized in 1928 for not being as active as women traditionally had been in the areas that women had traditionally gone into because they were denied other areas of occupation. such as volunteerism.
JD: Yes. 120
WT: Was that something you were ...
JD: Oh yes. I remember that. I could have made my first vote in '24, agewise. And I wasn't allowed to vote for my own father because my husband was than a registered abroad American. Because he was living abroad. He was running the business for the United Rubber Company in Scandinavia, which was four countries then. Norway, Sweden, Denmark (we lived in Denmark), and Finland. We travelled to all of those. And I came back to partake very briefly in my father's campaign. In those days, you were not supposed to make speeches or travel around with the candidate but to do little things on your own: attend teas, meetings, and whatever. The one thing I got out of that was, whatever I went into, it wasn't going to be politics.
WT: It appears then, that when you talked before about not being able to vote in the 1924 election, it was bad enough that you weren't able to vote in the election in which your father was running for president, it was also the first time your were entitled to cast a vote in a national election. Which is really a double blow.
JD: I was pretty angry about that. That's no longer the case. You can be born and married to a man now who is overseas, and you live with him overseas and keep your own registration in your own voting area. But it wasn't the case then. But I didn't have a strong feeling of having to ... I wanted a good little wife more than anything at that point, but not being the least bit of a lesbian, I had no idea how to get one. [laughs]
WT: It appears as though, from what the woman in the article is saying, her generation and your generation were the first women in modern times who were (they thought) free to pursue whatever career they wanted in a man's world and were free to compete with men and try to be like them competitively.
JD: I've never thought I was the least bit like a man. I've always been very fond of men, liked men very much indeed. I never thought I was like them, never wanted to be like them. Thank God I wasn't like them because I could see the difficulties they had.
WT: She seems to be saying that, for the first time, around 1928, her generation was faced with a new choice. It had always been accepted and traditional to have a career and, in a lot of cases, to sacrifice their family for their career. It was taken for granted. And the women, for biological or whatever reasons, were expected to take up the slack and maintain the family, care for the children, make whatever money was necessary while their men were off doing something else. But she appears to be saying at this point, women appear to have a choice, and that is, first they have some more control over their own bodies than they had before, so they had something of a choice in whether they were going to have children or not. They had something of a choice in whether they could have a career exclusively, or a career and a family. And the big question of "Should I have a career or a family or both seems to be ..." 121
JD: The usual answer was they would have both, and that's not easy. Because I tried to have both. Of course mine was also overshadowed by the fact that physically I did not bear children. It was all started by a miscarriage when I was first married and I was badly treated and peritonitis set in, and I found many many years later that the tubes had been blocked because of the infection, but it took a long time to find that out. But I, as the psychiatrists say, overcompensated. I raised seven children, not mine, and they still visit me. They're darling. My great grandchildren were here two weeks ago with their mother (who's my granddaughter, whom I took a great deal of care of when she was little). I don't take care of this generation because it's took late. I can't do it.
WT: It seems like you've written about the problems that women have keeping a family, particularly raising children in very difficult circumstances.
JD: I know a lot about that. I also worked for five years in an adoption agency.
WT: That was during the Depression as well, wasn't it?
JD: I suppose it was.
WT: I was going to ask if that had any affect on the people you saw, but I guess the people you saw were already on pretty tough times when they came to you.
JD: Yes. The parents of the children were, in those days it wasn't so easy to prevent having children and then once the child was conceived it was not easy to get an abortion. And a lot of young mothers gave their children away just because they didn't think there was anything else they could do. And all of the children I raised had very bad experiences in their early childhood and still carry the scars, of which I'm aware. I think I was easier on them than I would have been on my own children because they come from various backgrounds and had bad experiences. Not that they brought them on but because of their situation, one way or another. And therefore I was very well aware that I couldn't make them into models of me or of my family. Things that if they had been my own children I would have said "We don't do things that way." But I never used that editorial "we." I just said "If you do that, you won't be happy and people won't like you." If you bring up a lot of children you get very quickly to believe in original sin because all children are born little animals and have to be taught to be people. And I'm very proud of all mine. They all turned out to be people. I must have done something right.
WT: I seems as though, even though you had to struggle to balance your career and your children, that in the long run it was probably your children you decided in favor of. 122
JD: My father once said "You have a good mind but your heart is mush." And I wish he were alive today and I would say "Father, the heart paid off better than the head." Now the head might have paid off better, but then I don't believe I had the talent that would make me have to do that one thing and nothing else.
WT: Have you known women who made the attempt to pursue the career exclusive of children and others things and who have been happy in doing that?
JD: No, I'm trying to think of women writers of my own generation, Edna Ferber, they had children but I don't think they had children. Either they couldn't have children or couldn't find a man who would give them children. [laughs] I never had trouble getting a man. That was not my problem. But getting a good little wife, yes. That was a desperate problem which I never solved.
WT: The more I read what you've written, the more I think there's an interesting story behind it.
JD: Well, it's not awfully interesting to me because I've lived through it and done the best I could with it.
WT: Would it be fair to say that, whether you realized it or not, in 1928 when this woman was writing, you were being faced with the same challenge, career, children, or both...
JD: I knew that, but then you see I had to go on with the writing because I had to send the children to school.... When I got the job with the adoption agency loved the work but then I took on so many children at home, I couldn't do them justice and go on taking care of other children. And also telling people how to raise their children. It's very different you know. You can go in and say "Do this and do that." It's very different when they're in your home because you can't close the desk, go home, and forget it. It's there and never gets away from there.
WT: When I look through what you've written and your life, I see a story of what a lot of women for your generation probably went through in terms of trying to make decisions about family and career.
JD: It was a dichotomy.
WT: It's also interesting that a lot of men who pursue careers find out at some point in their life, after they've devoted a lot of time to their career and possibly sacrificed a lot of time with their family that in the long run they might have been better off spending more time with their family. 123
JD: Well men and women are very different. If you haven't noticed that, grow up on a farm. When I read that they're just alike. I read so much of that nonsense now. "Women are trying to be just like men." Forget it. You can't make a bull out of a cow or a cow out of a bull and it's not because of the way their mothers trained them. Men are different. Men are happy fighting I'm sorry to say. Maybe the world would be better off when women run it. It couldn't be worse off than it is now. Maybe women will run it. It will be a good thing I think because I like men enormously but I do not think that they are the supreme human being.
WT: I think some men find after pursuing a career for a long time that sometimes the career wasn't the main thing or shouldn't have been the main thing.
JD: They're born to fight and they will fight as long as they live. If they don't fight one thing, they'll fight another. Grow up on a farm. A ram will fight. A bull will fight. A stallion will fight. Men will fight. Now there was a time in the development of human nature when it was necessary to be like that. But I think men, because they're extremely intelligent too, I don't think we would have ever had the wheel if it had been left to women. Really. Because they have to accept what's going on and make the best of it. The only time you'll get a fight out of a cow is if you try to take her calf. She'll fight that. Protection of the young, that's very instinctive, very strong. Fight and kill and eat you if that would help. But they're different. No use pretending they're alike. No use trying to pretend that they can fill the same slots in the same ways.
WT: The conclusion that you're stating is one that the woman in this article says she may come to. The point she is at in 1928 appears to be: "I want to compete in the workforce alongside men because I've been told I now have the right to do that and that they're not going to give me any more privileges than they give themselves."
JD: Well I think that is true. They don't give each other privileges. If you put two rams together, one doesn't say, "You nice ram. You come along and you can have that ewe and I'll take these two." The ram says "I'm the boss." And the other ram says "I'm going to be the boss here."
WT: This woman seems to be saying that in 1928 the idea of competing with men on their own level was somewhat experimental and that it was yet to be determined whether women could compete with men or should compete with men or can compete with men.
JD: I never wanted to compete with men. I wanted to manage men, and I did. [laughs] You never have to compete with somebody you can manage.
WT: That's another one of the options she talks about. She says one of the things I could say instead of going out and getting a job is "Why should I compete with men when I can get men to give me whatever I want." 124
JD: I have letters from all three of my husbands saying the happiest years of their lives were spent with me, so I wasn't a failure with that. My father was probably right. I'd never have made a lawyer. The law would have bored me terribly. The dry dusty part. Writing doesn't bore me. Maybe I could have written better if I'd had no other interests but I could not have lived better. I couldn't have been happier.
WT: Maybe that's the lesson to be learned from what you've done. Perhaps you could have been a more famous writing if you had ...
JD: Cared about nothing else.
WT: Right. But is it worth the price you would have paid.
JD: No, but the women I've known who were famous writers... They never had something that was very deep in me, and that was being a woman means to rear children. And there's nothing more fascinating to me. They didn't have that. Edna Ferber didn't. Willa Cather. She's the one of that generation of women writers that I greatly admired. Maybe she was such a great writer that she didn't attract men or didn't want men. The writing was the thing. I didn't have that much talent.
WT: I don't remember reading anything of yours that was bad. I think you've written several things that are excellent. I think you probably could have written more things that were excellent ...
JD: If I hadn't had other things to do. Maybe so.
WT: When you weigh everything at the end and ask yourself which is more important, my children or my writing and you say "My children, although I like to write..."
JD: Now, they're not more important to me now. They're just like that [balanced]. I think that if I had been a better writer, they'd be like that [writing outweighs children]. Or maybe if I'd had my own children they'd be like that [children outweigh writing].
WT: To me and with other people, whether they're artists or in other professions, if you have a certain amount of talent you can write at a certain level very easily. It's almost like an athlete going into training. If you were able or interested in devoting yourself exclusively to something for a long period of time, a year, two years, five years, you might become much better than you were previously. The question is, what do you have to give up, or what are you willing to give up to do that? 125
JD: I was never willing to give up everything and just write, which probably means I didn't have the drive to be a top, genius, remembered writer. Because even the men who did that, the men we remember, gave up practically everything to write.
WT: I don't consider most of them geniuses. Certainly there were some and probably to me they excelled either because they wanted to or in spite of themselves, but a lot of them were people who were talented but not geniuses, who plugged along day after day, year after year, and perhaps made decisions about sacrificing things that other people weren't willing to sacrifice, like their family.
JD: Even Shakespeare didn't have a very happy personal life, and yet he is, I think, the outstanding genius. That's real genius. Like Mozart. I minored in music at Wellesly and I don't have any talent to create music but he and Mozart just got it from heaven. Because they had it to a degree. You can analyze them but where the inspiration came from. It just flowed into him and he wrote it down. And Shakespeare the same way. But his private life was a misery. He fell in love with the wrong person, abandoned his early wife. But he had this other thing. He just couldn't help it. There it was. Flowed in. Flowed out. I never really understood Shakespeare until I had a small operation on my foot and a nurse brought me an omnium compendium of English poetry and I lived on it for a week in the hospital. And I discovered that other people tried to write English but Shakespeare did it.
WT: We were talking about the protective feeling mothers have for their children, and it comes out a lot in your work. You use the analogy of a tigress fighting for her cubs, and you told you last week about some of the incidents in your first play about West Virginia mountaineers that's been lost. And one of the things you mentioned was the son Selby leaving on the train ...
JD: "I'm agonna get 'em."
WT: Right. And with the mother standing there. And it reminded me of your two Indian stories. In both cases the sons are going offon a train to die. The mothers are standing there watching. And the sons are going off to something they don't really understand.
JD: No young sons understand what war they're going into.
WT: It seemed to me that, what you were doing for the Indian stories was taking experiences in your own family and childhood such as the experiences of mountaineers being pulled into the 20th century because of World War I similar to the Indians who were being overwhelmed by white men's ...
JD: Yes. 126
WT: ... civilization and how they dealt with it. And yet the similarity between the two was that mothers and sons are mothers and sons, whether their Appalachian or Indian.
JD: Grow up on a farm and you'll know that.
WT: And that the theme is there and carries through into other works. Your story "Return" where the woman gives her child back ...
JD: Because the child is happier that way.
WT: And one of the themes that you seem to be dealing with is a conflict between a mother's natural wish to protect her children and be with them and a wish also for them to have the best, even if it means being separated from their mother.
JD: For as long as we can trace the stories of the human race mothers have done just that.
WT: But it's not easy is it?
JD: No.
WT: It's something I would guess men have a hard time understanding.
JD: Men couldn't do it. Men are so egocentric. No, they have that terrific ego. You're in my way so I'm going to fight you. Women if they have their children with them will say "That's your side of the road? Well we'll go on this side, but don't you touch my child! To get real fury, try to take a bear's cub away from its mother. They're different. They're not the same kind of people. I'd rather manage men that compete with them. And I have.
WT: The play Possession is another good example of dealing with that theme. The mother sacrifices an enormous amount ...
JD: She would do anything for those children to get them a good education.
WT: Sacrifices to the point where ...
JD: That's the story of the man in that picture on the mantle, who was my cousin. James Davis. 127
WT: Was he a professional artists?
JD: He couldn't be anything else any more than I could be help being a writer.
WT: He grew up in Clarksburg?
JD: Yes. And he was 6 months younger than I was. And we were great friends as children. I was more of a friend with his older sister. But as we grew up a little more we were great friends. Close.
WT: He was your father's brother's son?
JD: No. He was my grandfather's cousin's son. But he was also the child of one of my father's two best friends. His two best friends were cousins.
WT: What was his father's name?
JD: His father was Horner Davis and Carl Vance, whose mother was a Davis, were the same relation to my father and were his two best friends. I've just written a little verse about Cyrus Vance.
WT: Where did he go to school?
JD: Princeton.
WT: Has anyone done any biography?
JD: No.
WT: When did he die?
JD: Not too long. It was about ten years. Before I came back down here, certainly. Theriault's notes from Interview: 128 Julia Davis' stepson, Paul West, Jr., was sent off to boarding school by his divorced mother at the age of four. Paul Jr. came to live with Julia and Paul Sr. but had "problems." The boy seemed to blossom when he went into the Marines. But when he returned, Paul Sr. used to take him drinking, and the boy became an alcoholic. Eventually, Paul Jr. married, his drinking problems continued, and he was divorced after a daughter was born. Paul West Jr. committed suicide. Julia Davis, as she was watching Paul Sr. lead his son further into drinking, vowed to herself that, if Paul Sr. ever tried to do the same thing with Ramon she would kill Paul. "I wouldn't just have hurt him or warned him," she said. "I would have killed him." By the time Ramon was older and of drinking age, Paul and Julia were divorced. I mentioned the parallel to Ruhema Martin and her first husband in Julia's Play Possession, and she said, although that incident was true, the incident was also based on her own experiences. Characterizing her husband Paul, she said "He was shallow, a hollow man. No substance." She also noted that Ramon's father (Ramon Sender) wanted to marry her, but she refused. "That would have been a disaster," she said. The romance interest in The Sun Climbs Slow between Jean Moffat (Julia Davis) and the Spanish children's father, may have been based on actual events at the time. The novel was published in 1940 (midway through Julia's marriage to Paul West, 1933-1949) before Paul joined the service (after Pearl Harbor) and went overseas. The husband of Jean Moffat in the novel (is a missing war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War), who appears briefly at the beginning, is unheard of for a long period, and then reported dead. I didn't follow up on this with Julia Davis, but it seems possible that their marriage was in trouble when the Spanish children arrived and that there were other loves in both Julia's and Paul's lives before they were divorced in 1949.