yesterdaysprint:

It was an agony aunt sort of column. The “Cry on Geraldine’s Shoulder”, or “What They Say to Geraldine”, or “Problems, by Geraldine” (the last title came in 1943), or other variants on that title ran from September 1920 until 1955 at the least (1955 is the end of my available archives). Her tone changed a lot, even between late 1920 when she began and early 1923, but that might be the author ironing out kinks. Her opinions on some things changed during that time as well (but that might not mean she was someone else, or multiple people, maybe her opinion just changed). I’d like to believe it was one person, anyway.

Geraldine answered questions and gave advice, from a more modern and no-nonsense point of view, but for the most part it was an open forum for people to send their letters, where other readers could respond. A lot of the time there’d be a theme. It was a daily feature, it started as a small column and grew until it was at least half a page every day on weekdays and usually two full pages on Sundays.

I’ve tried to figure out who the real Geraldine, or ‘Jerry’, was but I can’t find anything online! Not just about Geraldine herself, but about the column in general. She doesn’t talk about herself much, one time she said sometime to the effect that she wasn’t much older than a college kid she was answering, but she’d evade a lot of the time (for example, someone asked about her hair colour and she said something like “by this time next year it might be red or blonde, it’s fun to mix it up!”).

If I find out more about Geraldine I’ll update for sure, because whoever they were, they were certainly refreshing!

Here’s the first introduction to the Cry On Geraldine’s Shoulder column, from September 6, 1920:

I’ve figured out who the original Geraldine was! She was columnist Elsie Robinson (Elsinore Justina Robinson) . Elsie began the column and ran it from 1920 to 1923. She was 37 years old when she began writing/editing “Cry On Geraldine’s Shoulder”. In 1923 she moved to San Francisco and began writing “Tell it to Elsie”. Later she wrote a column called “Young America” and “Listen World”, both of which were syndicated, I believe, and with the latter she began to make big money. She married three times and had a son, George, who died from complications from chronic bronchial trouble at 21 years old. She continued to write her column “Listen World” until she passed away in 1956, at age 73.

All the following information comes from the book I Wanted Out, written by Elsie herself. I would’ve just copied the whole thing but it was looong (it’s a whole book, after all!). 

Elsie was born in Benicia, California on April 30, 1883. Her father was a laborer and their family was poor pioneers. She had two brothers, Paul and Phil, and two sisters, Winnie and Mardele. 

In 1901, at age 18, she met the man she’d marry - a tall, attractive (and, her word, snooty) widower from a wealthy Vermont family, ten years her senior - when he came to visit a local pastor in Benecia. She later said that the marriage wasn’t much of a love match but rather one of convenience: on her part, she wanted to move away and saw her future husband as a means of escape; on his, he wanted someone to comfort and console him after the loss of his first wife. 

Her mother, unsure of her ability to fit in with what would be her new surroundings and role as a young wife, sent her to Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts for a year, with her fiance’s approval. She was unhappy at the school, which took a very literal view on the bible’s teachings, but she was now 3000 miles from home and knew no one near except her fiance and his family and didn’t want to ask her parents to go home, the place she wanted desperately to get away from. After her year in the seminary she toyed with the idea of ending her engagement but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. They married at 1903, when Elsie was 19.

The couple weren’t very happy from the beginning, though Elsie made clear trouble came from both sides. Her in-laws were not impressed with her, her mother-in-law looked down on her, and her puritanical husband was sure he needed to save her soul. The difference between Benicia, still quite “wild west” when she grew up there, and Brattleboro, where they were married and lived, was huge. Benicia was not especially clean, full of saloons and creaky wooden sidewalks, overrun with ruffians and cowboys. Brattleboro was spotless, gabled roofs and clapboard exteriors; well kempt gardens, not growing wild like the ones where she grew up. The vagrants, if any came that way, were hustled out of Brattleboro as soon as they stepped into city limits. Benicia was noisy and full of life; Brattleboro quiet and respectable.

Elsie’s husband believed that passion, even between man and wife, was wrong. After they were married, did he kiss her? No, he shook her hand. 

Elsie wanted gay clothing, but her husband vetoed this. Grey and black were the only colors she could wear. Her mother sent her a red flannel suit, but soon after it’s arrival, and her joyous avowal that she’d wear it no matter what her in-laws said, it “mysteriously” disappeared.

In her frustration during her ten years of marriage, Elsie turned to writing to help cope. Weeks could go by without the couple speaking and within the first year she began to feel increasingly stir crazy, crouching under tables and speaking to her dead brother, calling out for her father, 3000 miles away.

So the doctor was called in, and the doctor prescribed.. a baby. He told Elsie’s husband that unless she bore a child, she would go insane. So the couple took the proscribed treatment, shameful and sinful as her husband found it, and months after she knew it herself, afraid of his cold reaction, she told him - she was pregnant. He was courteous, but that’s all. The topic didn’t come up again for weeks.

Their son George, born when Elsie was 20, was not strong, he had severe bronchial issues. Elsie’s brother suggested the family could move back to California, where her husband could get work where he himself was building a dam, and maybe it would be a better climate for the child. But he wouldn’t go.

 So Elsie, now 29, with the help of her husband’s friend Morgan van Roorbach Shepard (her relationship with him was subject to much gossip in their town, she illustrated children’s books for him, but it was considered scandalous to spend time alone with a man not your husband for whatever purpose), lent her the car fare, and with her husband’s permission, took her son and went back to California. 

(A side note: Morgan Shepard, who everyone claimed Elsie was having an affair with, created John Martin’s Book, a children’s magazine that flourished in the 1910s and 20s. He collaborated with Doctor Maria Montessori!)

After three years alone with George in San Francisco, struggling to make ends meet, she moved to Hornitos, where a pair of her husband’s friends were prospecting. The hot dry air did wonders for George, he was breathing freely for the first time in his life. And Elsie began to work as a miner, laboring shoulder to shoulder with the men. 

Her husband visited twice during this time, once while she and George were still in San Francisco, where he agreed George needed a warmer climate, the fog wasn’t good for him, that Hornitos might help. The second time he came to visit them at the mine, where he owned shares. But he was frustrated, he wanted his wife and child back, and at the same time refused to come to live there with them, where his son was finally flourishing. 

He went back to Vermont and filed for divorce, citing adultery and desertion. Under state law, Elsie would have to go back to Vermont and hire a lawyer to fight, and most likely lose her son, or she could stay and leave it uncontested. Elsie did not contest the divorce, and while her ex husband later claimed to be repentant and attempted to expunge the adultery charge, it stuck. Elsie kept to her mining, educating her son, and her writing. 

Finally, during her last year in Hornitos her writing began to sell bit by bit. She wrote all kinds of articles about housekeeping, labor disputes, recipes. She even wrote poetry. But in 1918, at the close of the war, the mine was closed. It was considered too reckless a prospect. 

So Elsie, 35, and George, now 14, packed their bags and moved back to San Francisco, borrowing $50 from a friend from the mine to move into an small ground floor apartment and get on their feet. Once again the San Francisco air began to affect George poorly, but what could they do? Thanksgiving dinner that year was hot dogs. 

Remembering her illustration work back in Vermont with Morgan Shepard, Elsie tried her hand at illustrating advertisements. After going to many newspapers, with mock ups of ads for Shredded Wheat and Ivory soap and receiving no encouragement, she started trying department stores, and with Christmas coming, some of her work was accepted. 

George was mostly bedridden at this time, but with the department store money she was able to buy staples like oranges and occasionally meat. Elsie had no money for medical treatment, but they met a very kind young Jewish doctor named Abelson Epsteen. Dr Epsteen suffered from the same bronchial troubles as George and though they couldn’t pay, he was there day or night to try and treat George’s ailments.  

Elsie made do with the same tweed suit, paid for with borrowed money, for years. When the behind split she patched it with a pocket and continued to wear it. She wrote of the catty women in the offices where she peddled her copy, “I can still feel their supercilious glances sweeping over my clothes, my ungroomed hair and ragged nails”.

With no money for books, she and George would pass the evening hours telling each other stories, mostly about the animals they’d seen in the mining camp. This made her think, if her advertisements didn’t sell, maybe other children would enjoy these tales. 

She was shown the door at all the publications she tried until she went to the Oakland Tribune, where the editor was doubtful - columns for kids weren’t very popular, but still, maybe she could try writing and illustrating a column once a week. 

She called her column in the Oakland Tribune “Aunt Elsie”. The once a week column for children blossomed, children and parents wrote to the newspaper in praise, and eventually “Aunt Elsie” was doing a daily half page feature and an eight page special every week in the Sunday magazine section, with the addition of puzzles and drawing submitted by the children who read it. 

The part that interests us here, though, is that the parents wrote in. And soon they weren’t just writing in praise of Elsie’s children’s page - they were asking advice. They wanted advice on parenting, on relationships, on life in general.

In “Geraldine’s” own words: