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Post by Melani on Feb 20, 2008 9:18:16 GMT -6
Unfortunately, that's a common male concept in some cultures. I went to school and lived for some years in Miami, where of course there is a large Cuban population, and got to know about the idea of "La Mala Mujer"--the Bad Woman. She is apparently the woman every Hispanic guy dreams of--beautiful, and with no morals. Or at least with no morals, whatever she looks like. When she goes after the guy, he just can't help himself, so of course whatever happens is not his fault.
Very late one night, I was walking my dogs in my quiet Miami neighborhood, and a guy in a car drove up and kept trying to talk to me and invited me to get into the car. He generally behaved in a way I found worrisome in a residential neighborhood at midnight, so when I got home, I decided to call the police and report it. The cop who answered the phone had only one question: Was he Hispanic? When I said yes, he basically said, no problem, forget it. And I suspect he was right--the guy was just hoping I was the Mala Mujer he'd been looking for all his life.
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Post by Tricia on Feb 20, 2008 11:10:01 GMT -6
Cat--
There is a letter from Libbie to--I believe--Rebecca Richmond in April, 1866, explaining how Autie was not able to be in Monroe for the judge's death, or his funeral. Libbie kind of dismisses the whole matter as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Jeffry Wert finds it a bit darker.
--t.
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 20, 2008 12:04:43 GMT -6
Libbie was remarkably good at making weird things sound OK -- as with her representations of the court-martial, which are positively airy. I'm with Wert on this, I have to say! Custer seems to have been totally allergic to pain or illness or unpleasantness of any kind. (Bizarre, for someone whose trade was killing people, but there we are ...) Libbie has some fun with him over that in the recent auction letters, describing in graphic detail how she's had four teeth extracted: she says she knows he doesn't want to hear about it -- and then gives him the full blow-by-blow account. Clearly she knows he's going to blench and quail, and that she's ruined his breakfast. Whatever his virtues on the battlefield, I don't think he was much of a tower of strength in life's day-to-day emergencies. (Heaven help her if she had got pregnant. He'd have been no support at all.)
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cat
New Member
Posts: 12
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Post by cat on Feb 21, 2008 8:20:11 GMT -6
What great fun this is!
Trish--according to the Monroe librarian in charge of archives, the Judge didn't die until May 18, 1866. (I have the obit if anyone would like it.) Online dates appear to be false. So, the letter must pertain to GAC not being around for the Judge's perhaps obvious final illness.
I agree that Libbie was a flirt, and no, Victorian norms wouldn't permit divorce. However, I believe that her ability to overlook the most obvious lack of consideration of her feelings or, sometimes safety was extraordinary. Yeah, she seems to have given as good as she got.
Myles Keogh was very attractive. I even enjoy he's breezy honesty about the Cheyenne women the 7th were enjoying. I'm sure that he wouldn't have written a woman about that, but the refreshing honesty would otherwise have undoubtedly been intact.
I love that Elisabeth grossed out GAC with her tooth extractions! "Some keep a stilleto in their garter..." as someone once sang.
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 21, 2008 8:51:41 GMT -6
It is fun, isn't it!
Libbie slightly got her own back in the books, I think. She represents all Custer's actions as lovable little quirks, serving her No. 1 agenda of Custer The Hero ... but she also (I believe) has a No. 2 agenda of "look what I had to put up with". All the slights, misdeeds etc. (apart from most of the infidelities, of course) are described in vivid detail: being turfed out of bed by the dogs, the merry rattlesnake jokes, discovering she was to be summarily shot if threatened by Indians with "no chance of life", and so on. It's incredibly clever stuff. She gets her revenge by enumerating all the indignities she was subjected to, while at the same time elevating her own persona as intrepid/good-humoured/gallant army wife by appearing to take them in good part. A lovely job.
Agree about Keogh and the "breezy honesty"! The startling thing is that he often said in his letters home that he was assuming that "when I write to one, I write to all", and that Tom would pass his letters around to the many sisters. Not much self-censorship there, then ... Poor Tom must have had to resort to reading the letters aloud so as to leave out the racier passages. (There's a much earlier letter, as well, where he says he expects to acquire that "essential part of an officer's equipage, an Indian squaw".) So either Tom had to do the censoring, or those Keogh girls were much more robust in their attitudes than seems entirely likely ...
Yes, please, would love to see the Judge's obit.
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Post by Tricia on Feb 21, 2008 10:54:37 GMT -6
Cat--
Of course you're right about the date of Bacon's death; that is what I get for posting from memory and before the needed applications of caffeine ... sigh.
--t.
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Post by alfuso on Feb 21, 2008 14:12:51 GMT -6
Libbie was remarkably good at making weird things sound OK -- as with her representations of the court-martial, which are positively airy. I'm with Wert on this, I have to say! Custer seems to have been totally allergic to pain or illness or unpleasantness of any kind. (Bizarre, for someone whose trade was killing people, but there we are ...) Libbie has some fun with him over that in the recent auction letters, describing in graphic detail how she's had four teeth extracted: she says she knows he doesn't want to hear about it -- and then gives him the full blow-by-blow account. Clearly she knows he's going to blench and quail, and that she's ruined his breakfast. Whatever his virtues on the battlefield, I don't think he was much of a tower of strength in life's day-to-day emergencies. (Heaven help her if she had got pregnant. He'd have been no support at all.) I've read in several places that GAC did not like the sight of blood. And considered pillaging and mutilating any Indians/\village purely unprofessional. He couldn't even listen to conversations about blood or "savagery" - he would blanch and leave the room. According to Libbie. alfuso
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Post by crzhrs on Feb 21, 2008 14:27:28 GMT -6
Didn't like the sight of blood?
With all the combat & violence he saw (CW & Indian) what the heck was he doing in the military?
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Post by alfuso on Feb 21, 2008 21:57:35 GMT -6
crzhrs
I think GAC compartmentalized. Blood shed on a battlefield was acceptable. Mutilations were not. Blood outside of a battlefield somehow shocked him because it wasn't in its proper compartment then.
I work in a hospital Lab. I work with blood and body fluids all the time. But if I see the same outside of the Lab setting, it does disturb me, because it shouldn't be there.
It's a coping mechanism.
alfuso
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Post by beckbab on Jul 10, 2019 14:05:26 GMT -6
Funny ... teaching the girls to shoot. Wasn't one of the first phrases uttered to Kate Gibson Fougera--by the entire male population of Fort Lincoln--"can you shoot?" That certainly had to catch a virginal youth off guard, if it didn't frighten the daylights out of her.
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Post by weefly2 on Mar 28, 2020 17:44:49 GMT -6
Hello all, I emailed Diane regarding the Fanny Fifield Boston connection. I also have information on one of the Wadsworth girls. Emma, who was 24 years old when she visited the Custers in 1875, married Albert S Baker from Summerfield, MI sometime between 1875 and 1880. Her parents names were John N and Maria W Wadsworth, and she had three brothers and two sisters (yes, there was another Wadsworth girl.) Cat the problem with this theory is that Emma Wadsworth married Albert Baker in 1873 (proven) and she had no sister named Nellie
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Post by weefly2 on Apr 11, 2020 11:12:11 GMT -6
anybody find any information on these Wadsworth girls?
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