Miss Evangeline Travers

Branches Park,
November 3

I wonder so much if it is amusing to be an adventuress, because that is evidently what I shall become now. I read in a book all about it; it is being nice looking and having nothing to live on, and getting a pleasant time out of life--and I intend to do just that!

Cluttered West Alabama Home
March 28

Elinor Glyn, some 82 years before my birth, published a novel about Miss Evangeline Travers, who just so happens to be my literary soul sister. Said novel, Red Hair (or The Vicissitudes of Evangeline), served as some of the best Christmas reading I have ever done.

As I am to be an adventuress, I must do the best I can for myself. Nice feelings are for people who have money to live as they please. If I had ten thousand a year, or even five, I would snap my fingers at all men, and say, "No, I make my life as I choose, and shall cultivate knowledge and books, and indulge in beautiful ideas of honor and exalted sentiments, and perhaps one day succumb to a noble passion." (What grand words the thought, even, is making me write!)

£10,000 = $14,919.32. $14,919.32 in 1905 was about the same as $351,683.03 in 2009.
Well, at least now women don't have to make that much money to snap their fingers at all men...
I know this one certainly does not.
It is strange to refer to myself as a "woman," when I still very much feel like a girl. The growing pains of this 22-going-on-23-year-old have been rather acute as of late, and thus the hunger pangs of wanting to start a new adventure. My big girl muscles are growing; they yearn to be stretched and exercised, and to acquire strength. What better way to do so than by earning my undergraduate degree (Graduation count down: 40 days), and then going off to somewhere other than here and getting my master's?

Now that I am an adventuress, instead of an heiress, of what good to chronicle all that! Sufficient to say if Mr. Carruthers does not obey his orders and offer me his hand this afternoon, I shall have to pack my trunks and depart by Saturday, but where to is yet in the lap of the gods.

True, it is of much good to chronicle one's adventures (or lack thereof)--hence the return to blogging. I am still waiting to see what kind of adventure I will start. I have been rejected by two graduate schools already, and am on the wait list for the other. If Roosevelt University does not offer me a space by May 10th, I shall not have to pack my trunks and depart, and the gods know where I will be: here.

I am not a type that would please everyone. My hair is too red--brilliant, dark, fiery red, like a chestnut when it tumbles out of its shell, only burnished like metal. If I had the usual white eyelashes I should be downright ugly, but, thank goodness! by some freak of nature mine are black and thick, and stick out when you look at me sideways, and I often think when I catch sight of myself in the glass that I am really very pretty--all put together--but, as I said before, not a type to please everyone.

This is true, for the most part, Evangeline. I am definitely "not a type that would please everyone." I do have red hair, my eyebrows and lashes are much darker than those of a typical red head, though not black and thick. And sometimes I do think I am pretty all put together, but I would hardly be female if I felt secure in my appearance.

"With that mixture, Evangeline," [Mrs. Carruthers] often said, "you would do well to settle yourself in life as soon as possible. Good girls don't have your coloring."

Hmm... That remains to be seen.

All I know is that I want to live, and feel the blood rushing through my veins. I want to do as I please, and not have to be polite when I am burning with rage. I want to be late in the morning if I happen to fancy sleeping, and I want to sit up at night if I don't want to go to bed!

And so much more...

I shall write more presently.