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If I Had Married Him55 Letter to her mother [Between June 30 and August 29, 1893] Dearest Mother: Yes, I did forget to enclose the Bentley letter last time—or rather I looked in the envelope and tho’t I saw it inside and let it go without further examination. It’s in this time sure. Not much of it, which is thoroughly characteristic. You ask me if I had married him would I have said: “All right, you can have her, but not me too.” No indeed. If I had married him I would have done it as a pure business transaction. That’s all I ever considered it. I would never, under any circumstances marry a man I loved. And I didn’t want him for his person, but for his money. I only would have married then, as a legal means of getting the money. If I could have got it just as well without marrying him, I’d have lived with him that way. But I knew who I was dealing with. And since I had resigned principle and made up my mind to a bargain and sale business, I wasn’t going to sell without surety for my bargain. And as for what he did with himself after he paid me, what did I care. He might have had mistresses by the score for all of me. For all that I intended to be square with my part of the bargain, and would have done my best to have made his home pleasant. Needless to go over the circumstances that got me in so degraded a 256 55. Source: ms. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan Library. Labadie Collection notes refer to a date supplied in the manuscript, “1893 January 13,” as apparently incorrect, based on the reference to Altgeld’s pardon, signed on June 26, 1893. A heading of summer 1895 is supplied in another hand but is obviously also incorrect. De Cleyre’s references to “the panic” and the president’s ‹shing trip allow for an accurate dating of the letter as sometime after June 30 and before August 29, 1893. The economic “Panic” of 1893 was overtaking the country when President Cleveland needed surgery for oral cancer; press reports of his ostensible ‹shing trip were a cover-up to allow him to undergo the operation and recuperate without exacerbating economic instability (“Second”). Although the truth did not fully become public for many years, the Philadelphia press reported on the real reason for the trip on August 29 (“Grover Cleveland”). state of mind. You know how the ‹nances were; and perhaps, a little, of how badly I wanted to write, which I could not do (and have never since been able to do) for want of a little quiet security. But all that was an old story, and would not, of itself, have been suf‹cient to break down principles of action. It was just simply that I didn’t see any use in living anyhow so far as love was concerned. It didn’t make much difference to me who I lived with; and I thought I could make you and Addie a nice place to rest in after so many years of misery. I admit it was a disgraceful state of mind to be in and that no one ever condemned that sort of thing more than I have. But that’s the way it was. (And I don’t imagine the life would have been more unpleasant than lots of people live either). He wouldn’t have been a bit more faithful to her me than to me her— not a bit. Faithfulness depends on one’s own character—not on that of the person you happen to love. It may in›uence it you for a season—but innate tendencies will ever assert themselves. But I wouldn’t have cared. The idea of taking from one we love, is also an old point of disagreement , between you and me. I am more willing to take from a stranger than a lover. I do not speak of gifts, or tokens of love, which are always precious and impose no sense of obligation. But to me, any dependence, any thing which destroys the complete selfhood of the individual, is in the line of slavery, and destroys the pure spontaneity of love. It is communism , and communism, in any form, is revolting to me.—For the same reason, while I would do away...

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