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6 MOTHER, DO YOU LOVE ME? Except for a summer in Germany in 1892, Rebecca Flandrau ’s travel abroad, at considerable financial cost, centered on her sons — grooming them for great things, cultivating an appreciation for the fine arts, helping them recover, in John’s case, from illness. One of those journeys included a winter in Egypt in 1885, mostly in Luxor, when she almost despaired for young John’s life. Charlie was only fourteen at the time, but he must have sensed Rebecca’s quiet courage in the face of the crisis, the brave way she concealed anxiety and fear. Her demeanor made a deep, lasting impression on him and helped form their intimate bond and mutual dependence that grew stronger with the years. From that time forward he was, even more than her husband , her protector, her traveling companion of choice, her hope for the future. His letters to her always show a concern for her health. She must not go out in the sun. She must not get too hot or too cold. She must eat this, she must not eat that. He admired her strong, flinty resolve. She had made in her old age at least three separate journeys to rural Mexico, far from medical care, once enduring a month-long bout of fever and dysentery. At age sixty-nine, despite her frailty and the death of her closest sister two weeks earlier, she embarked on her final journey abroad, Life for the most part is very little more than a succession of horrors that must be met with whatever courage and dignity it has been given to one to display. Charles Macomb Flandrau to sister Patty, September 28, 1903 again to be with her oldest son, more for her benefit than his. One late July day in 1908 she was glancing through the Pioneer Press when she happened to read a news story that said her son John, named U. S. ambassador to Russia by President Roosevelt two years earlier, was desperately ill in a remote village somewhere in the Caucasus with what Charlie later called plueropneumonia. They couldn’t even find the village on the map, but Rebecca and Charlie, with Blair desperately trying to make a go of the coffee ranch in Mexico, left St. Paul within twenty-four hours. During John’s three-month recuperation, they saw Isadora Duncan dance in Paris and mingled with the “swells” of aristocratic Russia, including former New York Philharmonic maestro Vassili Safanoff and young Prince Felix Yussoupov, nephew of Czar Nicholas and heir to a fortune estimated at half a billion dollars. “Even at the age of seventeen,” wrote Charlie, “it was clearly indicated that he was destined to do something far different from the things most people do.” He did. Nine years later the prince lured Rasputin to one of his palaces, fed him poison cake, shot him with a revolver when the poison failed, then beat him with a rubber club before Rasputin finally drowned in the icy Neva River. By early March 1909 Rebecca and Charlie were back in St. Paul after six months abroad. Ambassador Riddle soon followed, forced to resign because of ill health. In May Rebecca was off again, attending her annual meeting of the Mount Vernon Association, despite a warning from the family physician, Dr. Ogden, that she could not expect to live more than a year. Charlie spent the spring planting flower seeds from Russia in the backyard, writing book reviews for the Bellman for a dollar each, ever so slowly spinning out an occasional finely crafted essay. He earned enough to pay his dues at the Minnesota Club, his tailor, and “all the other hundred and one loathsome things one has to pay for when one doesn’t positively live on a desert island.” That summer Blair met an intelligent, vivacious young woman who spoke French, played the violin, showed a talent for writing, and was a dazzling conversationalist. Blair was thirty-five. Grace Hodgson was twenty-three. Three weeks later they were engaged. The wedding was scheduled hurriedly so the newlyweds could head immediately to supervise bean picking at Santa Margarita. They were married August 21, 1909, in the Chapel of Saint John’s in St. Paul. Charlie played best man, bewildered by the turn of events, watching his extroverted new 110 M O T H E R , D O YO U L OV E M E ? [3.138.138.144] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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