Steinbeck’s Signet Ring Raises Question: What Happened to Mary Ardath?

February 8, 2021 by 5 Comments

john-steinbeck-signet-ring

In a room on the main floor of the Steinbeck House in Salinas, California—formerly John Steinbeck’s bedroom, now known as the Blue Room—visitors can inspect a glass display case containing a signet ring that once belonged to the author. When I started volunteering at the Steinbeck House some years ago, I was told that he had given the ring to a girlfriend, but that no one knew her identity, or how old he was when the gift was made. People assumed that Steinbeck was still in high school at the time, that the ring was forgotten when the pair broke up, and that, decades later, the unidentified recipient—now an adult woman—must have come across it and donated it to the Steinbeck House.

Then, about a year ago, I was going through some papers that I found in the back of a file drawer when I discovered three letters written by a woman named Mary Ardath van Gorder. All were dated 1986 and addressed to the then-president of the Valley Guild, the nonprofit organization that has owned and operated the Steinbeck House since the mid-1970s. In the first letter, sent from a retirement home in La Jolla, California, Mary said that she had once been engaged to John and that she still owned the signet ring that his mother had given him before they met. Would we like to have the ring back, for display at the house where John lived until he left for Stanford in 1919?

My curiosity piqued, I found this passage about Mary Ardath in Jackson Benson’s great life of John Steinbeck. It told a remarkable story, about John’s brief romance with Mary when he was a struggling writer in New York during the winter of 1925-26:

Ardath was a statuesque beauty who worked at the Greenwich Village Follies as a showgirl for a hundred dollars a week—four times what Steinbeck was making as a reporter. After meeting Steinbeck, Mary seemed to cling to him like a safe harbor. . . . Every night he waited for her outside the stage door, and nearly every night she would take him to dinner and try to talk him into getting a better job. She finally gave up on him after several weeks of trying and did marry a banker. But that is not the real ending of the story: after having settled down and had her children, she couldn’t stand it and came looking for John in California—with children in tow.

Sixty years later, now in her 80s, Mary Ardath wrote three letters that I found at the back of a filing drawer, in the house where Olive presumably gave her son the signet ring that Mary received from John in New York in 1925-26—and eventually returned to the home where the Steinbeck story started.

Readers with information about Mary Ardath’s life after the affair with John Steinbeck are encouraged to leave a comment or email williamray@steinbecknow.com—Ed.

Filed Under: Life, Steinbeck's Life Tagged With:

VMI Senior’s Poem Reminder That John Steinbeck Studied Formalist Poetry at Stanford

July 25, 2018 by 1 Comment

helen-of-troy-rossetti

Rushed Affection

You are a blood red rose,
A deep and opaque one.
Me I thought you chose.
Now the severance done.

You are a blinding Daisy,
My green and shining light,
And I unfortunate Gatsby,
With light pulled out of sight.

You are a song-filled siren,
Singing notes of bliss.
Jumped, I went a-diving,
Down deep, to find your kiss.

You are a gilded apple
That looks and tastes of gold
But makes my stomach grapple
And my sinking image cold.

I am the tragic fool
To haste forth like the bull
Into a rushed affection,
To drown in that same pool.

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The Paradox of True Love And Artificial Intelligence

May 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Image of simulated fashion shoot

The Finding True Love Department

Making the trip there to return his AI-lover,
it occurs to him that he may want to keep her.
What makes him feel doomed has to do, mostly,

with a longing to feel, again, night-wet grasses
and not then have to hear the voice of someone
whose talk is about the expectations of speech

and filling an hour. A glass wall is instructions.
Where to stand. What line offers which service.
And ads for ice cream and Bahamian vacations

and an off-Broadway musical Of Mice and Men.
Those beside him are making similar choices—
that she sings his name causes him to hesitate.

Of course his AI-comrade Grace has some say.
The prototype has constitutional rights, most
of which are ignored or at risk in this America.

At the facial recognition kiosk she starts to cry.
Big, locomotive tears. Machine-imperfect, real.
They move forward together under lighting as

chemiluminescent as Desire—he’s stroking
a hand and algorithms that frankenstein flesh,
like Lenny stroking a pup or a woman’s hair—

the parts of longing resurrecting in the blood
keep her and she votes to stay beside him.
Later, she’ll ask who John Steinbeck is.

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Picturing Edgar Allan Poe

March 28, 2018 by 3 Comments

Image of Edgar Allan PoeAs I was planning a trip from Virginia to California to visit my family in late February, I decided to add a two-day excursion to Salinas and the Steinbeck National Center. Shortly before I left, my eye was caught by a poetic tribute to Edgar Allan Poe at Steinbeck Now.com, an author website that had only recently come to my attention. Poe initially sparked my interest in closely examining great American authors. Now John Steinbeck has reignited my torch.

Poe sparked my interest in closely examining great American authors. Steinbeck reignited my torch.

At my website LitChatte.com I have identified Poe as the first of a line of great American literary writers who portray American history imaginatively. While acknowledging that John Steinbeck continued the tradition, I was surprised to find a poem about Poe on an author website devoted to a writer best known for fiction. Though I can’t say that Roy Bentley’s poem is a fair portrayal of Poe—a pioneer who contributed to the advancement of American literature and the vocation of John Steinbeck—reading it reminded me that both writers were trashed by misinformed critics when their works first appeared and again when they died. Steinbeck was called a communist and a liar and his characters were deemed two-dimensional when The Grapes of Wrath was published. At the National Steinbeck Center I learned that copies were burned in Salinas and banned from schools and libraries around America, despite Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize.

I was surprised to find a poem about Poe on an author website devoted to a writer best known for fiction.

Similarly, Poe’s character and work were maligned by critics in his day, most harshly by Rufus Griswold—a contemporary who served as one of Poe’s principal editors—in The Poets and Poetry of America, an anthology edited by Griswold, and in an unsympathetic obituary of Poe that Griswold wrote under a pseudonym. The existing tension between the two men was exacerbated when Poe took exception to Griswold’s inclusion and omission of certain poets after the anthology appeared in 1842. Griswold retaliated by trashing Poe’s personal life in the October 9, 1849 New York Daily Tribune obituary he signed “Ludwig.”

Like Steinbeck, Poe’s character and work were maligned by critics in his day, most harshly by Rufus Griswold.

It didn’t take much detective work to determine that “Ludwig” was Griswold, a conniver who gained a stranglehold on future publication of Poe’s work (by usurping the role of Poe’s literary executor from Poe’s living relatives) and who damaged Poe’s reputation by falsely claiming that he “had few friends.” Halfheartedly conceding that “literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars,” Griswold’s obituary portrayed Poe as a vagabond who moved pointlessly between Baltimore, Richmond, New York, and Philadelphia, even though Griswold worked at different times in the same cities—the only literary centers where a struggling writer (or editor) could hope to make a living in the first half of the 19th century.

Griswold’s obituary portrayed Poe as a vagabond who moved pointlessly between the only literary centers where a struggling writer could hope to make a living.

With each move, Poe developed an essential pillar of his versatile career as a professional writer, one which became a vocational model for later authors, like Steinbeck and Twain, who used their journalism to inform and inspire their literary creations. Griswold’s “Ludwig” obituary also spread the myth that Poe was a hopeless alcoholic and a madman, and it predicted that neither he or his writing would be long remembered. Time has disproved Griswold’s prophecy, and Griswold’s claims about Poe’s character and behavior have been discredited by serious scholars, though unwitting writers continue to base their assumptions about Poe on Griswold’s intentional misdirection.

With each move, Poe developed an essential pillar of his versatile career as a professional writer who used journalism to inform literary creation.

Reliable information can be found at the author website founded by the Poe Society, which points the reader to The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, by Dwight Thomas and David Jackson. A comprehensive account of Poe’s professional and personal activities, it documents Poe’s friendships, and the position of respect he held in social circles where he was known. Though Poe wrote masterpieces of horror, he wasn’t mad, and the state of inebriation noted by others may well have been caused by acute sensitivity to alcohol, small amounts of which made him sick and appear drunk. Poe’s drinking was limited to social situations where gentlemen were expected to imbibe. A disciplined writer (there are no credible accounts of drinking while writing), Poe was devoted to his young wife Virginia, whose death a few years before his own contributed to his emotional and physical deterioration.

Though Poe wrote masterpieces of horror, he wasn’t mad, and the state of inebriation noted by others may have been caused by acute sensitivity to alcohol.

The true picture of Poe’s life explains why the poem at SteinbeckNow.com concerned me. It opens by suggesting that Poe could or would have downed “thirteen insipid whiskeys,” a preposterous proposition, despite the clever pun on “insipid.” (From what we know about his clinical condition, it’s likely he would become disoriented after the first drink and pass out after the second.) The elusive line “A joke is to say what its poets are to America” reflects a viewpoint advanced by Griswold in his anthology, and the reference to Poe’s strained relationship with his “foster father” John Allan, who “left him nothing,” repeats a misconception about Poe’s later behavior. Having dropped Allan’s name, he worked hard to provide for himself and his wife. He was prolific and his work sold well abroad. But lax copyright laws failed to protect writers’ interests in 19th century America, and Poe suffered the consequences.

Poe was prolific and his work sold well abroad. But lax copyright laws failed to protect writers’ interests in 19th century America, and Poe suffered the consequences.

Mark Twain learned from Poe’s experience and eventually self-published. Copyright laws improved in the 20th century, and writers like John Steinbeck (who also had a more supportive father) lived to achieve the financial security denied to Poe. Roy Bentley’s poem may have been intended as a tribute, but it fails to reflect the facts of Poe’s life, or Poe’s contribution to the progress of American literature. Instead of shedding new light on a sympathetic subject, it continues the slight to Poe’s reputation consciously created by Rufus Griswold, who knew that “a story will circulate” once it’s invented. Though eloquent, the last line of the poem (“If God exists, it isn’t to love poets”) regrettably reinforces that unfortunate conclusion.

Filed Under: Places & Events, Steinbeck's America Tagged With:

Did Edgar Allan Poe Die for His Sins or for His Art?

February 15, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Image of Edgar Allan Poe and The Raven

“The Last New World,” Roy Bentley’s poetic tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, is a milestone for Roy and for this site. It is the 60th post from a writer of poetry and fiction in the tradition of John Steinbeck—and the 400th post at SteinbeckNow.com, founded four years ago to celebrate an enduring author who wrote fiction for a living but growing up excelled at writing verse.—Ed.

The Last New World

This time, the magic number for E.A. Poe is thirteen:
the number of insipid whiskeys he has downed today.

A story will circulate, afterwards, that he voted once
too often. A joke to say what its poets are to America.

It’s about the money, his foster father argued. And then
left him nothing. Not one cent. There were other deaths.

And now he prowls the backstreets, spectacularly broke.
Settles against the warmer stones of a building, wanting

not to freeze to death in a world of lit and burning stoves.
Tonight, Baltimore is as frosty as his dead foster father’s

heart. Books of poems and stories are selling but not well.
He has written that he must wait for a well-heeled widow,

any sort of rescue. Says it happened before. The deliverer
a Baltimore woman. At the first success of “The Raven”—

that January in New York, he waved off a tide of street
orphans flapping raffish arms and crying Nevermore!

There he was. Not happy, but ready to be thought so.
There she was. Not an archangel exactly, but smiling.

He’s coatless, a thin shirt no match for autumnal gusts
sputtering gaslamps. If God exists, it isn’t to love poets.

For Deni Naffziger

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Mothers of Invention: New Life Poem by Roy Bentley

January 1, 2018 by 3 Comments

Image of women working in German factory

The Fan

They are coming out of the factory walls—
those who might like to take her upright fan.
Hard young women winging through the hanging
strips, the rubber talons moving on conveyors.
And not all black women, but the one who
takes hold of it, claiming its positioning
in the air-freighted heat—she’s black.
And at least as fierce as my mother is,
or so my mother tells the story everafter.
Since she is from Neon, Kentucky, Nettie,
my divorced mother, the n-word starts flying.
And they set a time to meet to settle things.
After the shift. In the Inland parking lot.
And the other women show up to witness
the fireworks of a pissed-off Womanhood
this scorching August, their vulturey heads
bobbing as if to say Fuck her up! and Show her
who’s boss! to the American capitalist enterprise.
Which every night feeds on fear of depredation
until the sun unleashes its talons of gold and
red then even more gold, spiking morning
machine noises with pugilistic talk and
the threat of worse. My abandoned mother
kept the fan and she kept it blowing its fixed
or oscillating breezes her way that summer.
She had the job because ex-brother-in-law
William “Big Bill” Hensley was president
of the United Autos Workers Local 696—
Bill adored Mother, and called her Nettie
Dolores whenever he stopped by the house,
a brick 3-bedroom house my father left her
to pay for. And so she didn’t have to fight,
didn’t have to call the other woman names
and eventually reach in and get her a handful
of afro, though she would have. Instead, Nettie
Potter Bentley said she would requisition two fans.
One to blow away constant sweat from having
to cut and hang and send on the rubber strips
for 1964’s General Motors cars and trucks.
One to blow away the heat of resentment.

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On Recollecting Our Parents In Tranquility: A Life Poem

November 6, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Image of Roy Bentley's parents

As Much Ours as Not Ours

is an exhumation story my mother and I enjoy together,
a tale of my father’s unending prodigality regarding cars,
new and used, a passion, which she says kept them broke.
“And you went through the world shoeless,” my father says.
Prodded like this, he can defend the logic of his acquisitions
for hours. He leans in a doorway between the house and pool,
a Florida shirt blooming white blue red above his khaki shorts.
She is dealing a hand of solitaire, snapping the King of Hearts
between lines of cards I can’t make out from where I’m sitting.

They’re in their 60s. Happy as they will ever get, winter
breezes rippling the surface of one end of the pool. Waves
rebound beneath an enclosure curtained with bougainvillea.
The story of swapping a Mercury station wagon for a Cadillac,
the Cadillac for a ‘61 Impala with a shot-to-shit water pump,
has her glancing up to say I hated the Cadillac then smiling—
it’s Christmas—before snapping the next card, low to high.
Outside, bugs try the kingdom between nothing and light,
the ragged volley of trials aglow in his, and her, laughter.

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Remembering Paul Newman In Donald Trump’s America

September 11, 2017 by 1 Comment

Image of Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke

When Paul Newman Was Alive

All night, wind, a pelting of rain, then sump pump songs,
so that by morning I hear the clock of my life as off-then-on
machinery against the backdrop of August rain and everything
about being here now rounded off to the gold of first light in Ohio.
No one is out yet but a neighbor, who retrieves a New York Times
from a driveway. The asphalt is shining about the way it did then,
when Paul Newman was alive and the United States of America
was a good dream we were having about a country, this country.
If last night’s tempest was an army, divisions spent themselves
farther off in the east, over the shallow Licking River; beyond,
white lines of wood smoke emphatically rise into blue-black
like the prodigal smoke from cook fires in a Western movie.
My neighbor is at his door. He closes it, that door he lives
his life behind, as if one storm isn’t the end of the world.

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Ku Klux Klan Freak Show in Canon City, 1925: Life Poem

August 14, 2017 by 2 Comments

Image of Ku Klux Klan in Canon City, 1925

Ku Klux Klan at the Carnival in Canon City, 1925

Klansmen in hooded regalia commandeer a Ferris wheel.
3 to a car, 12 cars. As if visionless hate, rabid nationalism,
and 1st Amendment freedoms share the same carnival ride.

And this isn’t the South. It’s any given Sunday in Colorado.
By an awninged ticket booth, a handful of white sheets loiter.
They’re looking this way as if someone had said, Say, Cheese.

These 40-odd men stare back at our staring as if it’s a nice day
and they have stopped talking Wall Street or Yankees baseball,
whether their wives and daughters should have the right to vote.

Of course there is the fallacy at the heart of democracy that says
when the mob does what it does, it’s right. By simple arithmetic.
A face is said to have hovered over the waters during the creation

of the world. God’s face. If truth were the light certain mornings,
this midway would be a burning cross opening a door in the air.
If an aubade is a morning love song, this Sunday sky isn’t one,

though the noise the Ferris wheel sends up approaches singing.
Factoring in the ubiquity of folly and the capitulation of the sad,
isn’t it always Assholes Get in Free Day somewhere in America?

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Trump-Age American Life And Victorian-Era Madness

May 22, 2017 by 3 Comments

Victorian-era image linking train rides to mental illness

The Victorian Belief That a Train Ride
Could Cause Instant Insanity

Somewhere in Appalachia, a woman
is telling her oldest son not to strike back
at a fugitive father for having abandoned them.

The standard unit of pain is hers to call whatever
she wants since she wears the bruises like the son
wears Goodwill Levis and a t-shirt saying Tramps

Like Us, Baby, We Were Born to Run. The son isn’t
showcasing what he is, in his father’s cast-off t-shirt,
because Springsteen is the last word in Suffering. He

puts it on, the t-shirt, because what changes the way
we breathe is what we believe—though the Victorians
believed train rides could drive you mad. The riders

were rescuing themselves from the insanity of others
just by boarding. Just now, this one knots his leather-
and-scrap-wood tchotchke crucifix around his neck—

the cross is hollow and carries a powder they say
will kill you. I say what kills you isn’t the drug but
the hopelessness puts it there. Saying that, though,

is like floating on the wind through sainted hillsides
where row-house chimneys are censers distributing
God’s breath as coal smoke. The smoke is bruised

gold. It says how, even if there is no God and all
the days from Then to Now have handed us no
reason to hope, we still have a train to catch.

Inspired by an Atlas Obscura item linking Victorian-era train rides and mental illness.

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