Word: mabell
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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EDGE OF TAOS DESERT-Mabel Dodge Luhan-Harcourt, Brace...
Until this week Mabel Dodge Sterne Luhan had successfully concealed from most readers the fact that the three volumes of her Intimate Memories (Background, European Experiences, Movers and Shakers), most scandalous of contemporary autobiographies, were written at the urge of a moral purpose as lofty as any that ever moved a penitent at a revival meeting. Now in Edge of Taos Desert Mabel Dodge reveals how, in 1917, at Taos, N. Mex., she was converted by a ''spiritual therapy" which wiped out the effect of 38 years of neurotic floundering, beginning as a poor little rich girl...
Barely waiting to unpack, Mabel set off with a bag of oranges to break down the Indians' aloofness. Hastening her steps was the dread thought that "if people knew about what is here, they'd rush upon it and simply eat it up. ..." With a possessiveness much like that which she had formerly felt toward artists and writers, she declared fiercely: "I'd hate to have these Indians get recognition! Why, it would be the end of them!" Her first stop was at an adobe hut where a blanketed full-blooded Indian named Tony Luhan...
Invited to dinner by Mabel Dodge, Tony told her he could make himself invisible, and that the fire in her grate was a good friend of his. Thereafter Tony brought other Indians to dance and sing at Mabel Dodge's tea parties, became her expert on Indian affairs. Visiting daily at Tony's house, Mabel taught knitting to his beautiful, fastidious wife, who (unlike other Taos Indian women) "had a slightly malicious, sharp humor, but not real warmth." An imitation of Tony's poker-faced expression proved valuable to Mabel when she returned from these visits...
...surprise witness at the first session was tall, sharp-nosed, bespectacled Mrs. Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks, 66, whose right to her brother's fortune by terms of a will drawn nine years before his marriage has been challenged by Colonel Green's widow, redheaded Mabel E. Harlow Green, 66. Dressed completely in black as was the habit of her mother, Hetty Green, the "Witch of Wall Street." rich old Mrs. Wilks sparred verbally with solemn-faced Lawyer Isaac A. Pennypacker, who questioned her on behalf of Widow Green. Ignoring the scales of justice separated...