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Post by PhillyBlair on Jan 9, 2007 18:46:44 GMT -6
I am not, sorry to say, well read in regard to Libbie Custer. I've only read one of her books. I'm certain that there are some real experts on this site. Here's what I'm curious about -- we know that Libbie blamed Benteen and Reno for Custer's fate. Do we know if she was ever in a room with either of them after Little Bighorn? I'm assuming not. If not, do we know who was the highest ranking officer(s) present at LBH that she may have spoken to afterward? Any information regarding the details Libbie may have known of the battle? Since she steadfastly refused to be present at anniversaries, etc. I'm just curious as to where she received her information.
Also, does anyone think that she may have shied away from LBH anniversaries out of shame, as opposed to grief?
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Post by Realbird on Jan 9, 2007 19:43:54 GMT -6
I do not profess to be an expert about anything under any circumstances. However, let me say this; Libby Custer adored her husband with every fiber of her soul. Obviously she saw something in him that the average person did not. Thus, it is with true love. This woman lived many, many years after the death of her husband without soliciting the consolation, support, or sympathy of another man. In an era of "bang, bang, thank you ma'am" I find this position utterly remarkable and refreshing.
Capt. Weir, apparently, wrote a letter to Libby inferring that If she and he were alone in the "parlor" he would divulge many awe inspiring revelations. Some would use this as an excuse to consider them as lovers.
In her writings, she praised "Charlie Reynolds" as a special kind of fellow. Needless to say, some others would visualize this statement as the foundation of a "secret" affair as well.
The reality, I think, is that after George died, she could not be satisfied ( for one reason or another) with another man. If that is the case, let us praise her special commitment to her husband as special and wonderful.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jan 9, 2007 20:41:03 GMT -6
Let us, rather, get a firm grip on our emotions. I need only deal with a gag reflex, myself.
Mrs. Custer's life as a widow was totally dependent upon her elevating the late Mr. Wonderful into an icon he clearly was not. Since he'd left her broke, despite healthy inheritances, her income and lifestyle directly and indirectly was dependent upon that vision held by others.
Whether he actually held her adoration throughout is unknown, if not unstated. And frankly, any couple as revoltingly display conscious as they were - by her accounts as well as others - is suspicious on its face. Nobody knows, or can know, but what fanboys hold up as Divine Love of the sort they're entirely unlikely to know (ever) has the same evidence others might use for saying it was an obvious facade for a couple of world class social climbers with issues.
Animals all over the marriage bed make movement difficult, to say no more. Metaphor alert.
For all we know, she took a gazillion lovers throughout her inspiring widowhood. Or previous. I neither know nor care, but to take all this gooey and diabetic shock inducing claptrap on face value is pretty naive. She lied in her books as he did in his.
Unto me giveth a break.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jan 9, 2007 20:44:23 GMT -6
I think she had a crush on Wild Bill.
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Post by PhillyBlair on Jan 9, 2007 23:08:55 GMT -6
Hey, I didn't want this to degrade into another "who looked longingly at whom" post! Forgetting her love life, which I have zero interest in (although I tend to side with DC on this one!), does anyone know more of her interactions (if any) with survivors of LBH? (Realbird, I always enjoy your posts, which are well reasoned and thoughtful. If anything I wrote seemed to infer something negative about Libbie, that was not my intention. I wasn't talking about love, marriage, or anything romantic)
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Post by elisabeth on Jan 10, 2007 4:17:25 GMT -6
I've a feeling that Benteen mentions somewhere that he tried to call on Libbie years later, to bury the hatchet, but she refused to see him.
Godfrey showed her his Century article for her approval before publishing it. Not sure if they talked face to face, though; they might just have corresponded. We know Moylan wrote to her, and it'd be surprising if they didn't meet, given the family relationship. (Though he may have gone onto her ever-increasing enemies list after Godfrey's article -- she made Godfrey delete a damaging quote from Moylan in that.)
Don't know where else she got her information from; largely second-hand, I suspect, from people like Nelson Miles. She loathed Benteen anyway, as she freely admits in her books; whether she knew Reno well enough to hate him is less certain -- their paths had seldom crossed -- but there's a hint in Katherine Gibson Fougera's With Custer's Cavalry that they weren't best buddies. The description of the Gibsons' wedding says: "Colonel and Mrs. Tilford, Colonel and Mrs. Merrill, and Major Reno and his wife congregated in one corner of the crowded room, the Custers with their coterie in another ..." (This may be fiction, however. I don't have a date for their marriage, but it seems improbable Reno could have been there.) She seems to have made up her mind pretty swiftly; in time to egg on Whittaker to denounce them both in his book, at least. I guess it was fairly simple for her. Since she couldn't countenance the notion that it was Custer's fault, it must therefore be someone else's; and who better to blame than the two senior officers who (a) had had the poor taste to survive, and (b) she disliked anyway? So facts were secondary.
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Post by PhillyBlair on Jan 10, 2007 8:12:34 GMT -6
Elisabeth, thanks, that's what I was looking for. If anyone knows of more it would be appreciated.
I included the "shame" inference because it's often assumed that Libbie stayed away from anything LBH related due to grief and the lack of desire to associate with GAC's death again. But if you really consider it, it is more likely to have been shame. After all she was the CO's wife, and in the minds of many of the widows and surviving soldiers the CO was responsible for many lost lives. Imagine Libbie at an anniversary with other widows or surviving soldiers who lost friends. In her shoes, how would you feel? She did her duty in helping to break the news to the other widows, but eventually the "blame game" set in and it could not have been comfortable for her. Her need to create and preserve her husband's legacy as one of "hero" or "martyr" could well have been cathartic for her. If he wasn't responsible, then she had no need for guilt or shame. I'm not saying this was a conscious effort on her part, but........
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Post by elisabeth on Jan 10, 2007 8:50:01 GMT -6
It is an interesting thesis. I like it.
Maybe she got a hint of the cold shoulder comparatively early on -- with Mike Sheridan's thin excuses for missing Custer's funeral. (She'd asked him to be a pall-bearer; he claimed he couldn't because he -- wait for it -- couldn't afford the fare!) He was a close friend of Keogh. Could be that as well as the anti-Reno faction, there was a Mike Sheridan/Nowlan/Sturgis axis, friends and relations of the "martyred" dead, who blamed Custer roundly for the whole thing. Only speculation, of course, but the cult of Comanche makes one wonder. (Dandy survived too, but the regiment didn't beg to keep him as a mascot; they shipped him off as a "consolation" for Custer's father. Any of the ghastly dogs could have served the same purpose, if the regiment had wanted to keep the horse ...)
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Post by PhillyBlair on Jan 10, 2007 9:08:33 GMT -6
Yes, Elisabeth, I agree. A few weeks ago I stumbled across a quote from Windolph (I believe I posted it) about the anger of the burial party toward Custer. He claimed this later dissipated, but doesn't mention how long that took to come about. It would be human nature for anyone to be angry at Custer in the aftermath, and it would be human nature to handle things the way Libbie did. I'm certain that many would have chosen to be more objective later in life, but when her books were raking in the dough???.........but that's just the cynic in me.
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Post by Scout on Jan 10, 2007 9:45:18 GMT -6
Blair...what an interesting perception. I never thought of that before. I mean, what was the feeling toward Libby by surviving wives and children? The true underlining feelings of the 7th are really never questioned. Libbie's promotion of her husband's reputation in later years may have been aimed more at the families than anything else.
Elisabeth...Yea, Mike Sheridan's excuse was really lame. I can't come Libbie...I have to stay home and floss my teeth...
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Post by elisabeth on Jan 10, 2007 9:55:40 GMT -6
In fact, now that you've raised the question, it's positively striking how pointedly she steered clear of the 7th Cavalry's surviving officers! She had lots of correspondence from enlisted men (and the usual quota of pretend "sole survivors"), and she couldn't prevent some of them turning up to her lectures; and a bunch of veterans, Burkman included, were present at the dedication of Custer's statue. (The Monroe one, not the one she hated.) But as far as I know -- though I'm ready to be corrected if wrong -- minimal contact with officers. Those she seemed to rely on most were all from outside the 7th: Miles, Carland, etc.
You're really onto something, I think!
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Post by elisabeth on Jan 10, 2007 10:05:32 GMT -6
Scout, that's an excellent point. It would be fascinating to know what the widows and orphans made of her books. Wonder if any letters or reviews exist? Or even from unwidowed insiders. I bet Jennie Barnitz wouldn't have pulled her punches, for one ...
Of course, it may be that Mike S. just hated funerals! He made an excuse for not going to Keogh's, as well -- though in this case it was a bit more convincing, i.e. that he had to conduct Custer's remains to West Point. (This was when both funerals were expected to take place in the summer of '77, as soon as the bodies were conveyed back east. As it happens, both were delayed until the fall.)
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Post by PhillyBlair on Jan 10, 2007 10:33:44 GMT -6
Mike and Elisabeth,
This is all "thinking on the fly," but your comments have me considering others. I don't want this widowhood to begin sounding sexist, but how about some of these names and their roles after the death of their husbands (please note that I'm not linking the women below ethically, or in any other manner):
Coretta Scott King , Imelda Marcos, Eleanor Roosevelt (had Libbie's independent streak), Yoko Ono.... Sonny Bono's wife took up his political aspirations. Nancy Reagan seemed very similar to Libbie in keeping the image alive.
The common denominator is the desire to continue carrying the torch, so to speak. In some of the above instances the husband, while alive, was a very polarizing and controversial figure -- not unlike Custer.
Where Libbie is different from this list is in her distance. Unlike the above, Libbie's husband was responsible for the deaths of hundreds at the moment of his death. Are there any historical widows who come to mind who may have shared Libbie's unique situation, and do we know their responses? I suppose widows of famous military figures would be a good start.
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Post by elisabeth on Jan 10, 2007 11:15:13 GMT -6
Hmmm. Difficult one. It almost has to be someone from the mid-19th century onwards, when social mores allowed a woman an active public role and when the mass media existed to promote same ...
Not a parallel at all, really, but I wonder about Lady Bird Johnson? Poor Johnson got much of the blame for Vietnam; she somewhat purged that with Good Works after his death. But no, not really comparable.
Louise Barnett, in Touched by Fire, makes a couple of very astute points, as I recall. One is that Libbie had a role model for very public widowhood in the form of Queen Victoria, "the Widow of Windsor". She made a life's work out of it, and managed to semi-deify her husband -- who was initially regarded with some suspicion in Britain for his German-ness -- by naming loads of things after him (the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Hall, etc.) and fostering the continuation of his work in the arts and sciences. The other was that Libbie was extremely clever both in concentrating on their domestic bliss in her books, rather than attempting to argue the military rights and wrongs, and in (intentionally or not) presenting herself as the most engaging character in them. I can't think of another "professional widow" who has quite pulled off that trick, carrying her husband's torch by making her own blaze brighter! (Yoko may have tried, but I think we can all agree it didn't work ...)
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Post by crzhrs on Jan 10, 2007 11:46:15 GMT -6
How about the widow of Christopher Reeve who "carried the torch" only to die from Cancer . . . what bad luck!
Going back to LBH officers who corresponded/supported Libbie . . . I believe Godfrey wrote her a letter (1925) about a proposed memorial for Reno. Godfrey opposed it and so did Libbie who them went on a campaign to stop it.
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