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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter III
Anyway, with my beautiful clothes, my lovely jewelry, my cultured voice and my social manner, I launched myself unthinkingly and without any appreciation of the situation into Walter Evans' family. Even the old family servants were distrustful of the situation. The old coachman, Potter, drove Walter Evans and me to the station after the wedding. I can see him now in his livery, with a cockade in his hat. He had known me ever since I was a little bit of a girt and when we got to the station, he got down and took my hand and said, "Miss Alice, I don't like him and I don't like to say this to you, but if he doesn't treat you right - you come right back to us. Just drop me a line and I'll meet you at the station." Then he drove off without another word. The station master of the little Scotch station had reserved a carriage for us as far as Carlisle. As he put me into the carriage he looked me in the eye and said, "He isn't what I would have chosen for you, Miss Alice, but I hope you will be happy." None of this left the slightest impression on me. I have an idea now that I left behind me a group of very worried relatives, friends and servants. But I was quite oblivious of it then. I had done what I believed to be right and done it at a sacrifice and was now reaping my reward. The past lay behind me. My work with the soldiers was finished. Ahead of me lay a wonderful future with the man I thought I adored, in a new and wonderful land, for we were on our way to America. Before going to Liverpool we stopped with my husband's people and I never put in a more dreadful time. They [104] were nice, kind, good and worthy, but I had never before eaten with people of that caliber, or slept in a house of that kind, or eaten my meals in a "parlour" or lived in a house with no servants. I was terrified of them and they were more terrified of me, though kind of proud that Walter had done so well for himself. In justice to Walter Evans, I think that I should say that after we had separated and he had gone to one of our great universities for a postgraduate course, I received a letter from the president of the university begging me to return to Walter. He pleaded with me (as a very old and experienced man) to go back to my husband because, he stated, never in the course of his long experience with thousands of young men had he met a man as gifted - spiritually, physically and mentally - as Walter Evans. It was not surprising, therefore, that I had fallen in love and married him. All the indications were good except his social setting and lack of money, but as I was going to America to live and as he was shortly to be ordained in the Episcopal Church that did not seem to matter. We could manage on his stipend and my small income. We went straight from England to Cincinnati, Ohio, where my husband was studying at the Lane Theological Seminary. I immediately set in and took his various courses with him, whilst the money which I had supported both of us and paid all expenses. I found when it came down to the details of married life that I had absolutely nothing in common with my husband, except on religious views. He knew nothing really of my background and I knew less of his. We both tried at this time to make a success of our marriage, but it was a failure. I think I would have died of misery and despair had it not been for the colored woman who ran the boarding-house, connected with the seminary, on the top floor of which we had one room. Her name was Mrs. Snyder and she adopted me on sight. She nursed me [105] and petted me and took care of me; she scolded me and she fought for me and, for some reason, she hated the sight of Walter Evans and took pleasure in telling him so. She saw to it that I had the best that it was in her power to provide. I loved her and she was my one confidante. It was then, for the first time in my life, I came up against the racial problem. I had no anti-Negro feeling, except that I did not believe in marriage between the colored races and the white for it never seemed to work for happiness on either side. I was appalled to discover that under the American constitution we stood for equality for all men but that (through the poll tax and poor education) we most carefully saw to it that the Negro was not equal. Things are better in the North than in the South but the Negro problem is one that the American people will have to solve. The Constitution has already solved it for them. I remember at Lane Theological Seminary a Negro professor, a Doctor Franklin, had been invited to give the alumni address. After we came out of the chapel, I was standing with my husband and a couple of professors talking about the beautiful address we had had when Dr. Franklin passed by. One of the professors stopped him and handed him money to go and buy his lunch. He was not even good enough to eat with all the rest of us, though he could speak to us on the spiritual values. I was so horrified that, with my usual impetuosity, I rushed off to a professor and his wife whom I knew and told them about it. They immediately came back with me and took Dr. Franklin to their own home for lunch. The discovery of the anti-Negro feeling was like discovering an open door into the great house of humanity. Here was a whole section of my fellowmen who were being refused the rights of the Constitution under which they had been born.
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