Margaret realized that everything she respected about Stein’s style was lacking in her own muddled work. Her short stories and articles were obtuse and elitist. She used her own privileged life as the basis for everything she wrote, while Stein’s easygoing verse sprang from universal themes. Stein’s language was clear and concise, but behind those unpretentious words lay complex meanings. Meanwhile, Margaret’s writing was overblown and haughty.
Before this moment, Margaret had believed that formality was what literature required, but now she saw how a simple approach was possible and even respected by critics. She grasped the mechanics and the deep emotional well of Stein’s style and was electrified. She saw the same things in Stein’s verse that she’d come to understand in nature and art. There was always something new to discover in both because our lives and perspectives were always changing. The same type of daisy she had picked and admired as a child was certainly similar to one she might pick today; what changed was the way she saw the flower. This was true of great literature like Stein’s. It endured because it opened the door for a reader to embark on an ever-changing road of self-discovery.
For a long time, Margaret had felt like uncooked green peas whirling about in a pot, hoping to become a properly prepared dish. Now she was ready to write in a whole new style. She walked out of the lecture hall more determined than ever to become a writer of importance.
*
Margaret continued to write and hone her style, but by the beginning of 1935, she hadn’t sold a manuscript. At her father’s insistence, she moved back home to live with her mother. Margaret distracted herself by joining with a group of fellow Long Islanders to start the Buckram Beagles, a hunting club. Its members and their guests gathered each weekend in the fall and spring to run for hours through the island’s vast estates behind the hounds. Their prey was imported Austrian hares, a long-legged jackrabbit traditionally used in the sport. The hunt was capped by a dinner or tea on one of the estates, and Margaret was grateful for the opportunity to chat with these new friends even though the topic always seemed to be the habits of rabbits. At the teas and dinners that followed the hunts, the conversations were engaging, and Margaret met the most interesting people. She befriended a woman who had been the head of the Red Cross in France during the Great War and the man who was heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. He preferred to bend the rules of the sport by following the runners on horseback, but no one complained because they often hunted on his land. Whenever possible, Margaret traveled with the club as it competed against other kennels in field trials around Long Island and as far away as South Carolina. She hated being at home with her mother, who was skilled at finding inane errands for Margaret to run.
That next spring, Margaret escaped Long Island by finding work as a live-in tutor through one of her beagling friends. Her charge was Dorothy “Dot” Wagstaff, a twelve-year-old girl who had been sick and had fallen behind at her private school in Manhattan. Margaret’s primary job was to make certain Dot caught up with her class and passed her end-of-year exams.
Dot reminded Margaret of herself at that age. The young girl had a keen mind, but like Margaret, hated sitting still to do her schoolwork. She would rather be playing with her dog or at the stables with her horse whenever possible. She didn’t work efficiently and watched the clock instead of paying attention to what she had to learn. Margaret enjoyed finding ways to interest Dot in her studies. She also developed a reward system that encouraged Dot to focus her efforts intensely so they could go to museums, movies, or horseback riding.
When they rode horses together, Margaret sang hunting songs, show tunes, and ballads. A song titled “Abdul Abulbul Amir” was one of Margaret’s favorites. It told the mournful tale of two men who fight to the death in a battle of outrageous pride. Her recall of lyrics was impressive, and she amused Dot with her performances while in the saddle.
When Margaret discovered that Dot was an exceptional artist, Margaret taught her the techniques she had learned at the Art Students League. Dot preferred to paint her horse and dogs instead of landscapes or people, but her knowledge of the animals’ muscles and movements shone through in her art. At the end of the school year, Dot passed all her exams, and Margaret was thrilled. Teaching could be exciting, and most surprising of all, Margaret was really good at it.
*
Another of Margaret’s beagling friends had recently earned her teaching certification through the Bureau of Educational Experiments, or Bank Street, as it was commonly called due to its location. The friend praised the vitality and creativity of the school’s progressive program, so Margaret filled out an application. She was accepted into the teaching college for their fall term and hired on the spot as a teacher’s aide for a class of eight-year-olds at one of Bank Street’s associated schools.
Bank Street’s founder was Lucy Sprague Mitchell, a brilliant, fast-talking, chain-smoking educator who had previously been the dean of women at the University of California in Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Lucy had grown frustrated that the only jobs available to her graduate students were as teachers or nurses, even with their advanced degrees. In 1919, when Lucy left the highest realms of education to start Bank Street, the courses being offered at women’s schools were clearly inferior to the ones offered to men. Lucy believed that those less rigorous undergraduate classes kept women from meeting requirements to enter many graduate programs and thus advance in their careers. Until girls were held to the same demanding educational standards as boys, their vocational options would remain limited.
Moving women out of their standard career roles and prescribed subservience in marriage would take time. Girls had to see themselves as equals, and it had to begin at the early levels of education. Boys also had to see girls as true peers, and teaching methods needed to be reformed for this revolution to take hold.
Lucy had studied theories on education and had been deeply influenced by John Dewey’s groundbreaking ideas. He believed education should be a cooperative adventure between teachers and students and that collaboration would naturally foster equal-minded children. Dewey held that children learned better through a hands-on approach and proposed a less regimented curriculum that didn’t force children to memorize mountains of information. Instead, a teacher was to be a facilitator instead of an instructor. They were to guide and encourage children as they learned. All children, he believed, were explorers on the greatest journey of their lives—that of childhood.
*