Marla Miller Writes

One of the things that first drew me to this project, and really excites me about it, is to see these two women, Normena MacKinnon and Gertrude Tiemer, actively studying other female couples in the arts to see how they built lives together.

Both women were trying to learn more about Amy Lowell, for reasons beyond Normena’s desire to interpret her poems. So much of Gertrude and Normena’s life was carried out in secret — elaborate systems to conceal the volume of mail, with arrangements for calls and meet-ups, sometimes by code. Gertrude was often writing from the car while her daughter was at lessons, or behind a screen while her art students were practicing their still lifes.

In the mid 1930s Gertrude and Normena were both reading S. Foster Damon’s book Amy Lowell: A Chronicle with Extracts from her Correspondence, and Lowell’s long partnership with Ada Russell was something of a revelation to them. Gertrude reported that she was “Taking the thick Amy Lowell biography and looking for every reference to Mrs Russell. What became of her husband? Why did she have her child with her?” [A mother, Gertrude was deeply concerned about her daughter in all this, and she and Normena decided not to break up Gertrude’s family principally out of this concern] Gertrude complains that the biography “tells nothing about her, and gives no picture. Mrs Russell must have asked it be that way. Certainly no one thought it queer that they lived together — or did people talk? And what poems were written to her?”

They were likewise fascinated with the actress Katherine Cornell, writing back and forth about everything they saw her in, sending clippings and reviews. Historians of the theatre say that the so-called “lavender marriage” between Cornell and actor Guthrie McClintic was an “open secret,” and that Cornell was actually in a longterm relationship with the actress Nancy Hamilton. Once again, Gertrude was shocked that Cornell’s biography made no mention of this relationship. Cornell and Hamilton met through Gertrude Macy, Cornell’s secretary beginning in the late 1920s, the same years Normena began her Broadway career. “If all you tell me about Gertrude Macy is true,” Gertrude Tiemer wrote Normena, “then how can any life of Cornell be a bit sincere which never even mentions her and all this sop to the public about her love for her husband is sheer hypocrisy.” “You make me feel like such a child,” Gertrude once wrote to Normena, “and you so worldly wise.”

Biographies helped both women — but more importantly Gertrude — glimpse worlds unlike their own. (This has been a lovely finding — affirmation of people actively scouring life stories to sort out their own possibilities and aspirations) “Are not such examples of other lives,” wrote Gertrude, “a great help to me to keep patient?”

And they weren’t just passive readers: as they planned a rendezvous in Boston, Gertrude urged Normena to write Ada Russell to see if they could call on her. When I first read this letter, I though Gertrude was out of her mind — and assumed Normena reacted similarly. BUT SHE DOES. And Russell actually said yes! Normena visited Russell in her Boston home, hoping Russell might sponsor her on a tour of performances performing Lowell’s poetry.  They had a lovely visit, but nothing ever came of the proposal.

Learning how these women actively embraced biography to help them navigate their own lives — and were frustrated when biographers concealed the very information they were seeking — gives me confidence that my subjects would have appreciated my desire to write about their lived experience with empathy and honestly. I’m going to be thinking about, watching for examples of, “Biography for Better Living” as the work moves ahead.