Chapter 35 The Barrett Fowler Party

Prince Edward Island

Mrs. Barrett Fowler invited Dr. and Mrs. Blythe to yet another dinner party in Charlottetown. Owen and Leslie Ford also received an invitation.

Two published writers at one dinner party, you say? More than two writers. Mrs. Barrett Fowler tailored her guest list with a mind to the guests of honor – Dr. and Mrs. Stanley Rinehart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Specifically, Mrs. Stanley Rinehart aka Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Dr. Stanley Rinehart, a physician at Pittsburgh Homeopathic Hospital, lost his savings in the stock market crash of 1903. Dr. Rinehart had a wife and three young sons to support. Mrs. Rinehart, a nursing school graduate, couldn't go back her old nursing job. She couldn't take in other people's laundry, like the miners' wives did whenever the miners struck against the coal companies. She was a doctor's wife. She had the doctor's children to raise. She had the doctor's house to maintain. She picked up her pen instead. She would write her family out of its financial conundrum. In 1907, she wrote the mystery novel The Circular Staircase.

The Circular Staircase was Mrs. Rinehart's first bestseller, but not her last. By 1911, she published five novels and two plays. She personally earned enough to purchase a home for her family in a fashionable Pittsburgh suburb, away from the dirt and grime of the Rinehart's city abode. A few years after this, she covered World War I as a journalist at Belgium's front lines.

Nobody – not even Miss Miller the Medium – had any way of knowing most of this the evening of the Barrett Fowler dinner party. They did know that The Circular Staircase's success brought Mrs. Rinehart fame and fortune.

"Though, I'm not crazy about the novel. Terrible plot devices," said Owen as the two couples travelled to the party. "There's a spinster raising orphans on her own. Some characters get accused of crimes that they didn't commit. Dead people and living people get confused for each other. The hired help inserts themselves into the dialogue. People fall in love and marry at the very end of the story. As if anything that happened in The Circular Staircase could happen."

"You're envious because she wrote something that folks actually read," said Gilbert.

"Touché, Gilbert," said Anne. "You're married to Owen's co-author."

"We don't have to advertise that," said Gilbert.

"So, anyway," said Leslie, "This Mrs. Rinehart is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Owen has an ancestor from Pennsylvania. Owen's ancestor lived in Pittsburgh, too. Maybe you're related to Mrs. Rinehart, Owen."

"Doubtful," said Gilbert. "This Mrs. Rinehart wrote a whole book without ripping off someone else's work."

"Gilbert Blythe!" said his wife. "Owen wrote The Life-Book of Captain Jim. Remember?"

"How could anyone forget?" said Gilbert. "Though I must give Ford credit. He took Jim Boyd's ramblings in notebooks and turned them all into even more pointless ramblings. Which should have been impossible to accomplish. Ford truly is a gifted man of words. Meandering words, but words nonetheless."

"Gilbert Blythe, you need to behave yourself tonight," said Anne. "I've been excited for weeks about meeting Mrs. Rinehart."

It was the very first trip to the Barrett Fowler residence for which Anne could honestly say this.

Mrs. Barrett Fowler had changed up her house very little from the evening when Gilbert and Anne reconnected with Christine Dawson nee Stuart. Anne noted that the same bear's head rug on which she previously tripped still adorned the hall. Mrs. Barrett Fowler still received guests in a drawing room rife with overstuffed furniture and foolish and useless junk. ("Fandangoes" Anne thought the night of the dinner party with Christine, and she thought again tonight.)

"Ah, the famous Chesterfield," Anne thought, her eyes upon the sofa that she fell on the night of that other dinner party at the Barrett Fowlers.

Mrs. Rinehart wore a long-sleeved purple velvet dinner dress lined with gold. Much like Christine Dawson nee Stuart had worn the night of the other dinner party. However, Mrs. Rinehart wore it better.

Anne silently thanked herself that she chose to wear her apple-green net over that slip with rosebuds in it. She thanked her daughter Diana for helping her to arrange her red tresses into the stylish new drooping pompadour. She thanked Gilbert for the diamond pendant that he gave her late on the night of their fifteenth wedding anniversary, which now adorned her neck. She couldn't have the Rineharts thinking that Gilbert was any less successful a physician than Dr. Rinehart. Or that Anne was any less successful an author than Mrs. Rinehart.

Mrs. Rinehart greeted the Blythes and the Fords at their formal introduction. Then, Mrs. Rinehart's had softly grazed the carved mahogany desk which occupied the corner of the Barrett Fowler drawing room.

"Can you imagine having that desk on which to write?" said Owen.

Mrs. Rinehart responded, "Writing is work. Only part of it is done at a desk." *

Leslie said, "Oh, I heartily agree. I hear constantly from Owen about how the writing life wears him down."

Mrs. Rinehart said, "Writers speak with loathing of their job, but few of the professionals really stop. For one thing, the early urge to write, in time, becomes the habit of writing. We are often miserable at our desks or typewriters, but not happy away from them." *

"That's exactly how I feel about it," said Anne. "I get so discouraged sometimes." *

Mrs. Rinehart continued, "My own personal discouragement is so keen that it reaches the point of neurosis, and I have never failed to have it. At some time during any given piece of work it overtakes me. The story seems pointless, the writing bad. I am overwhelmed by a sense of futility. I want desperately to quit, and I have a sense of actual nausea at the sight of my desk. But eventually I carry on." *

The group fell silent at this pronouncement.

"Mrs. Rinehart," said Gilbert. "I understand that you were a nurse and that you first met Dr. Rinehart at the hospital at which you both worked."

"That's correct," said Mrs. Rinehart. "I studied nursing at the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses, at Pittsburgh Homeopathic Hospital."

Gilbert said, "And how did you find that experience?"

"Oh, it was all the tragedy of the world under one roof," she said. **

* Mary Roberts Rinehart's above referenced quotes regarding writing were taken from "Writing is Work," by Mary Roberts Rinehart, originally published in the Saturday Evening Post on March 11, 1939.

** From the novel "K." by Mary Roberts Rinehart.