Austin, Mary Hunter (1868–1934)

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Austin, Mary Hunter (1868–1934)

American author, primarily of naturalist fiction about the Southwest, who celebrated the environment, preserved Native American and Spanish Colonial culture, and mingled with the cultural icons of her times. Name variations: refers to herself as both I-Mary and Mary-by-Herself; (pseudonym) Gordon Stairs. Pronunciation: Os-ten. Born Mary Hunter on September 9, 1868, in Carlinville, Illinois; died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on August 13, 1934; daughter of Captain George (a lawyer) and Susannah Savilla Graham Hunter (a nurse); attended State Normal School at Bloomington and graduated from Blackburn College of Carlinville, 1888; married Stafford Wallace Austin (a vineyardist, irrigation manager, schoolteacher), on May 18, 1891 (divorced, August 21, 1914); children: Ruth (1892–1918).

Moved to California (1888); taught school (1897–99); published first book (1903); separated from husband and child and moved to the artists colony of Carmel (1906); lived through and reported the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire (1906); traveled in Europe (1908–10); commuted between New York City and Carmel (1911–24); publicist for the Panama-Pacific Exposition (1915); served as advisor and lecturer for Herbert Hoover's U.S. Food Administration (1917); named associate in Native American Literature at the School of American Research (1918); lectured for Fabian Society in England (1921); built house in Santa Fe (1925); organized the Spanish Colonial Arts Society of Santa Fe (1927); served as delegate to Seven States Conference (1927); led discussions at Mexican Ministry of Education seminars (1930); published autobiography (1932); bequeathed most of her estate to the Indian Arts Fund (1933).

Fiction:

The Land of Little Rain (1903); Isidro (1905); Lost Borders (1909); (as Gordon Stairs) Out-land (1910); Woman of Genius (1912); The Ford (1917); The Man Jesus (1925); Starry Adventure (1931); One Smoke Stories (1934). Nonfiction: The Flock (1906); California, Land of the Sun (1914); The American Rhythm: Studies and Re-expressions of American Songs (1923); Everyman's Genius (1925); (with photographer Ansel Adams) Taos Pueblo (1930); Earth Horizon: An Autobiography (1932); Earth Horizon: An Autobiography (1934). Plays: The Arrow Maker (1911); Fire (1912); The Man Who Didn't Believe in Christmas (1916). Articles and essays on contemporary events, Native American Folk Culture, and Regionalism in American Fiction in numerous periodicals and published literature collections.

At the stroke of midnight on September 9, 1868, Susannah Hunter gave birth to the daughter she did not want. Struggling to keep herself, her husband, and their son financially afloat in the years after a debilitated Captain Hunter returned from the Civil War, she did not welcome another mouth to feed. Mary Hunter Austin bore the brunt of her mother's anger; Mary's younger siblings, born in more prosperous times, felt the acceptance for which she always longed. As a child, Mary could not under-stand why her mother pulled away from her but cuddled her siblings; she knew that her knack for saying the very thing the adults were skirting disturbed her mother, but she felt unable to curb this tendency. Mary also found it difficult to distinguish between events she experienced and events she heard about. She believed she had experienced things if she could see them in her mind, but Susannah labeled her stories "lies."

Oddly enough, it was Susannah who introduced Mary to an internal source of assurance and comfort. As her brother Jim practiced his alphabet at the table one afternoon, four-year-old Mary mimicked him. When he came to the letter "I," Mary questioned Susannah, "Eye?" Her mother answered, "No, I, myself, I want a drink, I Mary." That day, Mary became aware of I-Mary within herself. From that time on, the physical Mary-by-herself associated I-Mary with the print in Jim's book and attempted to summon the invulnerable I-Mary from that source whenever possible. Precocious with the written word, Mary began school in the third grade, but she suffered socially until she learned to weave tales to entertain the other children.

Austin identified with her father and spent time in the family orchard with him. George Hunter encouraged his daughter to read and to explore the natural world. Under a walnut tree in the orchard, she discovered a Presence that would give her strength throughout her life: at the age of five, she recounted in Earth Horizon, "Earth and sky and tree and wind-blown grass and the child in the midst of them came alive together with a pulsing light of consciousness." Austin became aware of an extraordinary reality in this mystical experience, which she called "the Practice of the Presence of God."

Mary suffered the loss of her two strongest supporters in 1878 when her father and her younger sister Jennie, whom she named "the only one who ever unselflessly loved me," died. She moved with her family into a small cottage in Carlinville away from the orchard and meadows. Her mother worked as a nurse and participated actively in the Methodist church and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The WCTU campaigned against alcohol use and provided women an opportunity to learn skills such as public speaking while maintaining their role as arbiters of morality. Austin often accompanied her mother to the meetings and formulated her ideas about marriage, the role of women, and concern for the right of women to control their own bodies. As an adult, Austin still felt a vast distance between herself and her mother, but learned to appreciate Susannah's efforts, along with those of the Carlinville women, on behalf of women on the American frontier.

At age 16, Austin entered Blackburn College but an illness forced her to withdraw. The following year, her mother sent her to the State Teachers' College. Though Mary did not desire it, teaching presented the only socially acceptable vocation for Gilded Age women in the Midwest, but the curriculum drove Austin to a nervous breakdown. When the local doctor, reflecting the views of the day, declared that, as a woman, she had overtaxed her brain and she should not aspire to work beyond her capacity, Mary responded by regaining her health and convincing her mother to let her return to Blackburn. She studied science, became the editor of the school newspaper, and was elected class poet.

After graduation in 1888, Austin and her mother went West to meet her brother Jim on the land claims he had made under the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Timber Culture Act of 1873. Both acts encouraged settlement of the American West. Austin disagreed with the move and nearly suffered another breakdown on the trip to Tejon in the southern Joaquin Valley in California. She wrote about the experience, which she recorded in her notebook, in "One Hundred Miles on Horseback." The entire family, Mary in particular, suffered from slight malnutrition once there. The dry land had few edible native plants, and Susannah disliked the expensive town-bought canned fruits, vegetables, and milk. Austin recovered her strength by roaming. Wanting to better understand her surroundings, she obtained government documents about the area, including agricultural reports, geological and botanical surveys from General Edward Fitzgerald Beale, the owner of the Tejon Ranch. She also spent days on her horse, accompanying the sheepherders, Indians, and Spanish-speaking vaqueros (cowboys), learning the work of the ranch and taking notes. While her friendships with these men fulfilled her spiritually and mentally. Single Anglo-American women did not freely associate with men in general, and with nonwhites in particular. However, these men provided inspiration and material for Austin's later work, particularly The Flock, One Smoke Stories, Isidro, and The Ford.

General Beale helped the Hunters financially by arranging for them to run an inn along the stage route. The family relinquished their timber claim but kept working to obtain title to the other claims. Previously oblivious to her family's difficulties, Austin suddenly realized their financial insecurity and understood that she could not continue to depend upon Susannah and Jim for her welfare.

In 1889, Austin took a provisional teaching position in Mountain View near Bakersfield, but she failed the required teaching credentials examination that December. She tutored privately before failing the exam once again in May. While boarding with a family in Mountain View, Austin became aware of local farmers' problems in obtaining water rights, observations that would later inform her novel The Ford. Simultaneously, relations with her family further deteriorated, and Mary decided that marriage could provide her both economic means and a way to build her own life. By chance, a neighbor named Stafford Wallace Austin began to court her. Cultured and intelligent, Wallace fancied himself a gentleman farmer. While Mary did not feel love for him, they shared some interests, and Wallace did not balk when Mary frankly informed him of her career intentions. They married on May 18, 1891.

Marriage disappointed both of them: he did not encourage her work, while she did not keep a clean house or take much interest in his vineyard. They had little money. When Wallace failed at grape-growing and refused to take a teaching job, Mary insisted he seek other work. In 1892, they moved to Bakersfield where Wallace found an irrigation construction job; Austin continued to write and discovered she was pregnant. Then Wallace moved to San Francisco to work with his brother. Left behind to pack up, she took the opportunity to write two short stories as I-Mary based on her experiences around Tejon. In San Francisco, Austin sought advice from poet Ina Coolbrith on submitting manuscripts; afterwards, she presented the tales to Overland Monthly, which accepted them both. Two months later, the couple moved to the Owens Valley so Wallace could manage an irrigation project at Lone Pine.

The townspeople of "The Little Town of the Grape Vines" were primarily of Mexican origin, and she felt a rapport with them. When Wallace lost his job, Mary worked at a boardinghouse while he took odd jobs and rejected a position as a school principal. Her husband's refusal to take on work that he disliked greatly frustrated her.

Mary stayed with her mother to have her child, Ruth; the labor lasted 48 hours and left her ill. While there, the local court served Mary with a legal notice for debts incurred by Wallace before and during their marriage. Austin arranged to sell their Mountain View property and pay their debts in installments. When Wallace took a teaching job in the Owens Valley, Austin hoped for a new start. Instead, they grew further apart.

Mary continued to seek spiritual strength and healing through the natural world. She became friends with the Paiute Indians, who inspired The Basket Woman, and renewed friendships with the señoras, miners, and sheepherders in town. She worried about her frail child and only later accepted the mental handicaps of her daughter and determined that Ruth had inherited them from the Austin family. Mary had trouble writing with the distractions provided by Ruth, the disapproval of neighbors, and lack of support from her husband, but the Austins needed money and Mary needed to write.

Hoping to sort out her situation, in 1895 she took a teaching job in Bishop, away from her husband. But Mary had to leave Ruth in her room unattended while she taught, thereby drawing criticism and unsolicited aid from her neighbors. Austin covered her embarrassment about the situation with aloofness. Though Wallace disapproved, she eventually placed Ruth with a childless farm couple nearby. After her mother's death in 1896, Mary tempered her grief with the realization of her new found freedom. At about this time, she learned the principles of Paiute prayer from a medicine man, Tinnemaha, learning to detach herself and concentrate upon writing. When Austin arranged to teach in Bishop for another year, she became friends with the female physician, Dr. Helen MacKnight (Doyle) , who cared for Ruth.

In 1897, in hopes of reviving her marriage, Austin agreed to take a position teaching at Lone Pine under Wallace as the school superintendent. Finally, their combined salaries allowed them to pay off most of their debt, but Mary suffered from nervous tension. Seeking treatment in Los Angeles, she established contact with magazine editor Charles Lummis and his wife Eve . By the time she returned home, Wallace had taken a job as a land registrar in Independence and expected her to fulfill his superintendent duties as well as teach. The following summer, Austin again went to the hospital, this time in Oakland. While there, she met philosopher William James and discussed Paiute prayer methods with him. Reinspired, Austin turned her attention to studying the Paiute lifestyle; she became convinced that all rhythmic movement held creative force and tried to capture this in her writing. In 1899, she decided to move to Los Angeles, taking Ruth with her while Wallace remained in Independence.

Mary's friendship with the Lummis family bloomed and provided her with opportunities to meet others who would later open doors for her, including anthropologist Frederick Webb Hodge, feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman , naturalist John Muir, and author George Sterling. Then Wallace Austin insisted his wife return to Independence. The couple attempted to share their lives by organizing a little theater and taking hiking trips together. In addition to her first book, Austin began working on Isidro and published a stream of poems in a children's magazine. She began writing about her surroundings, revealing her intimate connection with the earth in a rhythmic style. In her new house, Austin could look out her sunroom window as she wrote; she felt "two tall, invisible presences" stand over her there. When Houghton Mifflin published The Land of Little Rain in 1903, she explained her life in a short biography requested by the publisher: "All of Mary Austin's work is like her life, out of doors, nights under the pines, long days watching by waterholes to see the wild things drink, breaking trail up new slopes, heat, cloud bursts, snow; wild beasts and mountain bloom, all equally delightful because understood."

Austin took a trip along the California coast and returned home determined to make changes. She placed Ruth in a Santa Clara sanatorium in 1904, making the arrangement permanent in 1905, and never saw her daughter again. Her love for the land caused her to participate in the controversy over Los Angeles' bid to claim Owen's Valley water rights for use by the city over 200 miles away. Owen's Valley eventually lost control of its water and thereby its chance to grow. Unable to stand by and watch the valley wilt, she left Wallace and moved to Carmel. Austin would later use the experience as additional material for The Ford.

Carmel life allowed Mary to spend time with George Sterling and his Bohemian Club crowd: photographer Arnold Genthe, writer Jack London, poet Nora May French , and others. Austin purchased some property and began working in her "wick-i-up" among the branches of a huge oak. In 1906, while meeting with her publisher's representative in San Francisco, she had a premonition of disaster. The next morning, the city shook awake with the massive earthquake and resultant fire. Austin published her account of the catastrophe.

In her new setting, Austin's personality changed. She lost touch with her surroundings and the Presence. She developed a reputation, fortified by her unconventional apparel, as an egotist with a priestess complex. During this period, she wrote Lost Borders in which her description of the desert has been used to describe Austin herself by several authors: "If the desert were a woman, I know well what like she would be … and you could not move her, no, not if you had all the earth to give, so much as one tawny hairsbreadth beyond her own desires." She began collaborating with other writers and thrived on the intellectual ferment.

In 1907, Austin was told she had terminal breast cancer. Relying upon I-Mary, she chose to avoid surgery, accept her fate, and go to Italy "to die quietly." Fortuitously, some friends invited her to Florence. En route by steamer, Austin was invited by a Vatican representative to study Christian prayer in Rome, an attempt to ease her suffering. Her subsequent cure reaffirmed her belief in the Friend of Man and I-Mary. While she was abroad, Austin studied the life of Jesus Christ and the artistic depictions of him, and met a number of influential people including the dancer Isadora Duncan , writer H.G. Wells, suffragist Anne Martin , poet William Butler Yeats, author Henry James, and novelist Joseph Conrad. Her experience brought her greater confidence. She wrote Outland, based upon notes developed with George Sterling and published under a pseudonym, Gordon Stairs, in 1910. Austin marched in suffragist parades in London before sailing for New York City to produce her play, The Arrow Maker.

While in New York, she developed an ardent friendship with journalist Lincoln Steffens, and became associated with other women in the suffrage and labor movements, including advocate Margaret Sanger , journalist Ida Tarbell , and labor leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn . When the relationship with Steffens soured, Austin poured her heartache into the autobiographical A Woman of Genius. Her career going smoothly, she attributed her lack of emotional fulfillment to her success, her genius.

Longing for the West, Austin returned to Carmel in December 1912 and began a new friendship with Dr. Daniel Trembly MacDougal, a botanical research scientist for the Carnegie Institution. Her eccentricity became local legend: dressed in robes, her hair flowing below her waist, she would wander the woods, waving her arms as she talked.

Despite continued publication, her sales were disappointing, and Austin was plagued financially. Since New York held the key to connections essential for her career, she returned to the city and took a studio at the National Arts Club. Soon she found herself in another intellectual circle, an evening salon hosted by the rich young widow, Mabel Dodge Luhan . Luhan, who shared Austin's inclination towards mysticism, became one of her closest friends.

When funds allowed, she retreated to Carmel or the Southwest for renewal. While in Carmel in 1914, Wallace formally charged her with willful desertion and abandonment without cause. Their divorce became final in August. Mary returned to New York and finished her unorthodox manuscript of The Man Jesus; the book was not well received. In 1916, she became involved in the Mexican Revolution, speaking out on behalf of the revolutionaries. In early 1917, as part of the war effort, Austin was consulted by her old friend Herbert Hoover, then heading the U.S. Food Administration, on ways to educate women in the preservation of foodstuffs. The same year, she began a long-standing quarrel with her brother George over the welfare of their niece, Mary. She resolved to establish a relationship with her niece just as she learned that her own daughter had died.

After traveling to Santa Clara and arranging for cremation of Ruth's remains, Austin went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to do research at the School of American Research. She immediately became involved in community affairs—holding teas at the new Museum of New Mexico, organizing a community theater, and giving a series of lectures about writing. Her post as an associate in Native American Literature did not include remuneration; finances continued to plague her, yet she insisted on trying to adopt her niece who resisted her efforts. Austin escaped to Mabel Luhan's home in Taos where she finished 26 Jayne Street.

Returning to New York, she joined a new circle of bohemian friends, including authors Willa Cather and Sinclair Lewis. To shore up her reputation, in 1921, Austin journeyed to England to renew contacts and lecture at the Fabian Society on "The American Rhythm." She believed that the "new" American free verse had roots in the ancient American Indian rhythmic measures. When she returned to New York that winter, magazine editors sought articles from her, and the National Arts Club honored her with a testimonial dinner in January. Austin scraped together enough funds to travel to Carmel that summer and for a 2,500-mile-long automobile trip through the Southwest for research the following year. Her trips allowed her to visit MacDougal, but she resented having to do what she termed "hack work" (primarily articles) to survive financially. She gave a speech to the National Popular Government League in opposition to the Bursum bill, which sought to deprive the Pueblo Indians of their land and water rights, and organized speaking engagements for a delegation of New Mexican Indians in 1923. About this time, Austin developed high blood pressure, which limited her activities until she finally had a complete breakdown at the Luhans' home in Taos.

Determined to leave New York and recapture her connection with the Presence, she purchased property in Santa Fe before returning East. Illness and a frenetic workload continued to bedevil her; as Augusta Fink, author of I-Mary, points out, at the very time she was writing about them in Everyman's Genius, her techniques for tapping into the "deep-self" began to fail her. Selling her Carmel property to finance her move to Santa Fe in March 1925, she built her house, Casa Querida (The Beloved House), near Frank and Alta Applegate , Indian and Spanish Colonial art aficionados. Austin resumed her writing and reentered community affairs. She supported the new Indian Arts Fund by purchasing a lot north of her home and deeding it to the fund as a museum site. She organized a group of writers, the Genius Club, and collaborated with the Applegates to form the Spanish Colonial Arts Society in 1927.

Despite outward appearances, Austin continued to fight illness and found it difficult to concentrate for long periods of time. Short articles brought quick money. While researching for a series of articles, Mary established a relation-ship with San Francisco philanthropist Albert Bender. When Bender brought photographer Ansel Adams to Santa Fe to collaborate with her, the result was Taos Pueblo. Shortly thereafter, New Mexico's governor appointed Mary as a delegate to the 1927 Seven States Conference on water resources; at the conference, she fought for Arizona in its quarrel with California for control of the water in the Colorado River. She followed this experience with an article against the building of Boulder Dam (later named Hoover Dam) on the Colorado in The Nation.

[My books] originate in an inherent sensitivity to the spirit of existence which has been set in motion by the activities of my horison [sic], the zone in which sky and earth meet and commingle.
—Mary Austin, Earth Horizon

In January 1928, Austin undertook a lecture tour in the Northeast. The woman wearing a blue velvet gown with oxfords and a Spanish comb in her hair commanded the attention of her audiences. A burst of energy and renewed awareness of I-Mary, propelled Austin. She began Starry Adventure and published a series of articles entitled "Experiences Facing Death." In 1929, she took time out from her work to lecture on primitive drama and produce a Spanish play at Yale University. While away, she received news of the sale of El Sanctuario, the chapel at Chimayo, a priceless treasure of Spanish colonial art. Austin used her contacts to locate an anonymous donor to purchase the property for safekeeping. Despite her revived career, money problems persisted, and she probably agreed to write her autobiography, Earth Horizon, to reduce debt. Writing about her life bored and depressed her, but dogged by continuing illness, she hastened to complete her work in hopes of acquiring enough cash for treatment.

The next two years proved productive. In 1930, she traveled to Mexico to conduct discussions on Indian art and culture for the Ministry of Education and found her own sense of the American Rhythm expressed in the murals of Diego Rivera. In Santa Fe, Austin continued her work with Spanish Colonial arts and helped establish a bilingual program for Spanish-speaking children and a native arts and crafts curriculum for Indians. Her activities extended to fighting federal legislation harmful to the Pueblo Indians and raising funds for the Arts Society.

As she arrived in New York in October 1932 for the release of her autobiography, she learned that H.G. Wells considered her characterization of him in Earth Horizon libelous. She quickly made revisions, but the strain resulted in a heart attack. The financial uncertainties of the Great Depression made earning a livelihood as a writer more difficult, and Mary continued to work. Despite a second heart attack, she undertook a lecture trip to Los Angeles. While the trip was successful, she suffered another attack upon her return to Santa Fe. Austin continued to work on her manuscripts the following spring but suffered spells of severe illness. She recovered sufficiently to appear at the Santa Fe Poet's Roundup on August 9, where she read several poems from The Children Sing in the Far West. She submitted a Spanish colonial arts book manuscript to her publisher the next day and suffered a final heart attack on the 12th. She died in her sleep the following day. Her ashes rest amid boulders near the summit of Mount Picacho to the east of Casa Querida; her final resting place overlooks the valley of Santa Fe, the mix of its cultures, and the blending of earth and sky in a harmony that Mary Hunter Austin sought in her writings and in her life.

sources:

Austin, Mary. Earth Horizon: An Autobiography. NY: Literary Guild, 1932.

Doyle, Helen MacKnight. Mary Austin: Woman of Genius. NY: Gotham House, 1939.

Fink, Augusta. I-Mary: A Biography of Mary Austin. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1983.

Pearce, T. M. Mary Hunter Austin. Twayne's United States Authors Series. New Haven: College & University Press, Twayne, 1965.

collections:

The largest are the "Mary Austin Collection," Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, and the "Special Collection, Mary Austin," Coronado Room, University of New Mexico Library. Small collections exist at the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley; the Mills College Library, Oakland, California; University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Arizona; Blackburn College; and the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles. Her house in Independence, California, is a California Historical Landmark.

Laura Anne Wimberley , Department of History, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia