Volume 16 , Issue 39

100 Years Ago, 17 Nov. 1914, Tuesday

One hundred years ago today The Seattle Star, dated 17 November 1914, Tuesday, had the following front page headlines: Judge Gives Divorce To Woman Who Slaved To Educate Husband, Now A Doctor, Who Deserted Her. For a little while longer back in November 17, 1914, Dr. Carl W. Silverberg would have to endure the bonds which bind him to the wife he did not love, and who was not his social equal.

It was back in 1914, November 16 that Judge Humphries granted to Mrs. Hannah Silverberg an interlocutory decree of divorce, which she gave him to enter college and become a physician.

The defendant, Carl Silverberg, had to pay $1,800 at the rate of $100 every months; and he also would have to pay alimony of $50 a month until the $1,800 was paid. The court granted Mrs. Silverberg attorneys' fees to the amount of $250.

Mrs. Silverberg did not ask for divorce, but for separate maintenance, but Judge Humphries, in granting the divorce, insisted that it was in the best interests of society that "this union without love, this mockery of marriage" should be dissolved.

"The Star told of the early beginnings of the Silverbergs' romance, conceived in love, sacrifice and worthy ambition, which now ends in a sordid settlement -- a romance from which all love and trust had been wrung, leaving only distrust and cold suspicion.

They were playmates in Finland. They came to the New World, where "all men are created free and equal." Together they found employment in a rubber-boot factory in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The boy was ambitious, the girl loyal. They pooled their savings, and the boy went away to college. The girl stayed on in the factory. She scrimped and saved, and sent him money. He took the academic course ... then medicine.

The gir's father died in Finland. In the settlement of the estate she received $1,000. She gave it to the boy. With his doctor's certificate in his hand, he stepped forth from college a man! He was Dr. Silverberg, with a practice to build up, his way to make it in the world.

He came from Chicago to Seattle in 1908 and began practice. The understanding between them was that she should join him at once, but he put her off, she says, for two years.

It may be her work-hardened fingers distressed him. It may be that her narrow domesticity -- she had never liked factory work and had longed for a home -- chafed him. It may even be that occasional slips in grammar made him whence.

She may not have been a cultured woman, for culture was a vague thing which was acquired -- at college and elsewhere. It was laid on like varnish. But she at least had the appearance of gentleness and refinement, and she will possessed a certain faded prettiness.

Dr. Silverberg wrote Hannah letters which told, step by step, how the gulf between them widened.

September 5, 1910: "You are probably a little above the average among domestics, but think of having to associate with those who are 75 or 100 per cent below yourself, which would be my lot if we were together. When we were first marriage we were nearer each other, but now the gulf between us is growing wider constantly. It is necessary that a woman should be more competent than simply to cook and keep house. That suites a laborer very well, but an educated person craves for one who can do more than that. Such as being posted in up-to-date life; in a general knowledge of higher ideals."

Dr. Silverberg magnanimously admitted in his letter that his wife was in no way to blame for their unhappiness. She was "as good a woman as ever walked the earth. I know it and honor you very highly. Nevertheless I cannot love you."

He analyzes love and proves, to his own satisfaction, that love between them was impossible.

Refusing to establish home, he sent her back to Rhode Island, where she had friends. She received letters from him there. In this letter he drops a hint of what was a secret in his mind during his student days when he was getting an education with her earnings:

"I was broken down in health when I quit school, not from studies only, but on account of that anguish I suffered when I thought of what was coming and when I should, sooner or later, take off the mask of the past. I have done all to attain to the mark, and have had to pay for it."

The letters became shorter, brusquer, more space being given to consideration of money and less to analyzes of love. march 4, 1911: "your letter to hand. Thanks. I have given you credit for what you have done these ten years. But you must understand that a body cannot create for himself love, or buy it, either. It comes like the rustling wind in the northern pine forests."

March 8, 1911: "Your letter to had . . . You ask that I should pay you for the ten years we have been married. Nothing doing. That you can depend on. I did not compel you to work . . . In the same letter he wrote: "A secret which I have never before told you I will now communicate to you. When we were married at pastor's, I made up my mind that this marriage should not hold out."

By this time Dr. Silveberg seemed to have at last told the whole truth. Even in his student days he felt himself "above" the loyal girl who was slaving to advance him along the road of his ambition. He said he went through the marriage ceremony "against the voice of conscience."

By now her love is dead. All she wanted was her money. So they fought it out, with a table between them, with their lawyers beside them, the court looking down upon them. The talk was all of dollars and cents. When their eyes met, there was no love in their glances, or sorrow, or even hate, but only distrust and cold suspicion.
  |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---