The Mail Order Bride Said I Am Not Pretty. The Mountain Man Braided Her Hair Like a Ceremony

The first letter Viola sent to August contained in its third paragraph a sentence that most women in 1871 would not have written. I am not pretty and I think you should know this before we go any further. Her name was Viola Marsh. She was 29 years old. She had been a school librarian in the town of Garfield, Ohio for 6 years, and she had learned in those six years that saying the difficult thing first was more efficient than managing the moment when the other person discovered it.

Viola said the difficult things first. She had found this saved a great deal of time. He was August Brennan, a mountain man in Wyoming territory with 300 acres in the Laram Range. He had a homestead in the Laram Range in Wyoming territory, 300 acres of mixed timber and meadow, and a cabin he had been adding to steadily since 1866, when he came west with a mule and a set of carpenters tools, and a conviction that the frontier had more to offer a man of his particular inclinations than the city his family had wanted him to

stay in. He received Viola’s letter at the Laram Post Office in March of 1871 and read it standing at the post office counter because he wanted to read it before he rode home, which took 2 hours each way. He had read many letters from the mail order bride agency before Violas.

He had been corresponding with the agency for 8 months, during which time he had read responses from women who were pretty by their own accounts and practical by their own accounts and eager for the frontier by their own accounts and who did not describe these qualities with any particular evidence to support the claims. Viola Marsh had not made claims.

She had said, “I am not pretty.” She had said, “I am a good librarian, and I can read in six languages, and I know how to fix a water pump, and I can make do in circumstances that other people cannot make do in, and I am not looking for a life that someone else has already built.” She had said, “I am not pretty, and I think you should know this before we go any further.

” August Brennan had written back the same day. He had written, “I have read your letter. Come anyway.” He had then written two more paragraphs about the homestead and the terrain and what to bring and what not to bring and when to come. But the first sentence was the one he had written first and the one he had not revised.

Viola read it at the Garfield Post Office on a Tuesday in April and stood there for a long time with the letter in her hands before putting it in her coat pocket and walking back to the library. She had said the difficult thing first. He had told her to come anyway. She had not expected that. The letters between them over the following two months before her departure established the specific and careful knowledge of two people who are learning each other through the medium of paper and who are both for different reasons more honest in writing than they

might be in person. August wrote about the homestead with the specificity of a man who loved the particular details of his work. which Meadow drained well, which did not, why the cabin’s east wall had been rebuilt twice, and what he had changed the second time. Viola wrote about the library and the books and the six languages and the water pump.

And in her third letter, she added, I also braid my hair every morning. I am not sure why I am telling you this. August had read that line. I also braid my hair every morning. I am not sure why I am telling you this more times than he had read any other line in the correspondence. He had read it while standing at the kitchen table and read it again sitting at the kitchen table and read it a third time in the evening by the fire.

He did not know why she had told him either. But there was something in it. The specific detail of a woman’s mourning. The intimacy of the braid. The admission that she did not know why she was sharing it. That told him more about Viola than all the other information in the letters combined. He wrote back, “You have told me because we are learning each other and hair is part of who a person is.

” She wrote back, “That is a very specific thing to say.” He wrote, “I am a specific person.” She wrote, “I know. I can tell from your letters. What you should know about mine is that the braids are tight and practical and not beautiful, which is consistent with the rest of me, which is also tight and practical and not beautiful.

” He had read this last sentence and thought, “I do not believe you are correct about yourself.” He had not written this. He had written, “Then come as you are.” She had come. Viola Marsh had been saying, “I am not pretty to herself and occasionally to others since she was 11 years old when a girl at school had said it to her in a tone that was intended to wound and had instead simply informed.

She had received the information the way she received most information as a fact to be added to the existing body of facts and accounted for in all future planning. She was not pretty. This was a fact. She had brown hair that resisted arrangements, average features with nothing distinctive about them, and a face that expressed what she was thinking at a speed that most people found either refreshing or exhausting depending on how they felt about being read.

What Viola had instead of pretty was a great deal of else. She had the six languages, English, French, German, Latin, Greek, and a functional reading knowledge of Italian that she was still developing. She had the water pump competence, which had come from a summer spent at her uncle’s farm in Indiana when the regular pump man was sick and someone had to learn.

She had the ability to remember what she read specifically, which made the library work both natural and slightly maddening because she always knew exactly where any book was and could not convince herself that this was not a reasonable expectation of everyone. She had straight teeth, which she had always thought was wasted on a face that would not use them to advantage.

She had said, “I am not pretty,” so many times that it had lost most of its sting and become simply a piece of identifying information she provided early. The way a person with an unusual name provides pronunciation guidance in advance, she was not fishing for disagreement when she said it. She was not looking for reassurance.

She was doing what she had always done, which was saying the difficult thing first so that the other person could decide what they wanted to do with the information before she invested further in the interaction. She had found this approach efficient with employers, colleagues, and the committee that ran the library. She had not previously applied it to August, but the principal held.

She had packed her trunks with the same methodical attention she had applied to every practical task of her adult life, categorically with a list, checking things off as they went in, leaving space at the top for the things she would need first upon arrival. She had packed the letter with come anyway in it, not because she needed the reminder, but because it was the thing in the trunk that made the most sense to have there.

She had packed her hair pins, the strong ones, the ones that held the braids in place all day, and a comb and a small hand mirror and a ribbon her mother had given her when she was 12, when someone had first said she should try doing something different with her hair. She had not as yet tried anything different.

The journey from Garfield to the Laram Range in Wyoming territory in 1871 took 10 days and required three train changes and a day and a half by stage coach through country that became in the last hours something Viola could not find in any of the books she had read about the West. A quality of space and light that books described but could not contain.

She arrived at the stage office in Milbrook, Wyoming on a Friday in September, and stepped off into the mountaineer and saw August waiting at the post and thought, “He is exactly what his letters suggested, which means the letters were very good letters, which I already knew.” August Brennan had come to Wyoming in 1866 because he was 23 years old and his father had wanted him to take over a carpentry business in Pittsburgh and he had understood with the clarity of a young man who knows exactly one thing about himself with certainty that he was

not going to take over a carpentry business in Pittsburgh. He was going to build something of his own in a place that had room for it. He had left Pittsburgh with a mule and the tools and the conviction, and the conviction had turned out to be correct, which was not always the case with convictions. August had built the original cabin in the first summer, four walls, a roof, a functional fireplace that took him four attempts to get drawing properly.

He had rebuilt the east wall twice because he had gotten the angle wrong the first time and corrected it the second time and gotten a different angle wrong which he had not understood for 6 months and then had corrected with the combination of mathematics and physical experiment that he applied to all problems.

By 1871, the cabin was what he had always intended it to be, solid, well-made, large enough for a person and a life, and he had been thinking for 2 years, for another person as well. He was not lonely in the simple sense. He had the homestead and the work and the books. 61 books acquired over 5 years from the book seller in Laram, who knew to set aside anything on history, natural philosophy, or engineering, and the occasional company of his nearest neighbors, who were four miles to the south, and who came by twice a year, and

with whom August had the specific and satisfying relationship of people who are glad to see each other, precisely because they do not see each other often. He was not lonely. He had simply concluded, after 5 years on the homestead, that the life he had built was large enough to hold more than one person, and that building it alone, when it could hold more than one, was a kind of waste.

He had not argued with Viola’s assessment of herself in any of the letters, not because he agreed with it, but because arguing with a person about their own self-description in a letter before you have met them in person, seemed to August both inefficient and presumptuous. He was a person who believed in evidence. He did not have enough evidence yet.

He had told her to come anyway, not because he disagreed with her self assessment, but because her self assessment was not the thing that mattered most to him. What mattered most to him was the sentence about the water pump and the six languages, and the fact that she did not know why she had told him about the braid, which he found, for reasons he also could not entirely explain, more compelling than any of the other information she had provided.

He had been thinking about the braid since April. This was an unusual amount of time to spend thinking about a detail in a letter, and August was aware that it was unusual, and he had thought about why it was unusual, and arrived at an answer he found credible. The braid was the thing she had not planned to say.

Everything else in the letters was deliberate. The six languages, the water pump, the I am not pretty, said first and specifically. But I braid my hair every morning, and I am not sure why I am telling you this was not deliberate. It was the thing that had come out before she could decide whether to include it, which meant it was the truest thing she had told him.

August Brennan was waiting at the stage office in Milbrook when Viola stepped off the stage coach on that Friday in September. He had ridden the 2 hours from the homestead in the morning and had been waiting at the post for 40 minutes. He was tall, not unusually so, not a mountain of a man, but tall in the way of a man who has spent 5 years doing physical work and has acquired the breadth and the solidity that come from that.

He had dark hair and a face that the librarian in him filed under unremarkable until he smiled, which he did when she stepped off the stage and looked at him and said his name. The smile was not unremarkable at all. She said, “August Brennan.” He said, “Viola Marsh.” She said, “Yes.” He said, “You are exactly what your letters suggested.” She said, “I warned you.

” He said, “You did.” They stood at the stage office in Milbrook in the September light and looked at each other with the specific attention of two people who have been learning each other through paper and are now discovering what paper cannot contain. August took her trunks. Viola looked at the mountains above the town.

She said they are larger than the photographs. He said they are. She said the photographs are inadequate. He said most photographs are. She said yes. They got in the wagon. The cabin was what August’s letters had said. It was solid, well-made, larger than she had expected, with a kitchen that had been organized by a person who thought about organization, and a shelf of 61 books and an east wall that was clearly newer than the rest.

Vio walked through the rooms the way she walked through the library stacks, methodically, taking inventory. She noted the books, the layout of the kitchen, the rebuilt wall, the fireplace that drew cleanly. She noted that he had put a lamp in the east bedroom and a small rug on the floor beside the bed and a hook behind the door for hanging things.

These were details that indicated he had thought about what she would need. After supper, which August had cooked, a venison stew with herbs from the kitchen garden that was significantly better than Viola had expected, given that the letters had not mentioned cooking. They sat in the main room.

August red, Vio red, which was what they had both indicated in their letters they did in the evenings, and which they were therefore doing without the self-consciousness that new situations usually produce, because they had both already said this was what they did. The fire was going. The September night was coming down cold outside. Inside was warm and quiet, and smelled of venison and pine, and the particular paper smell of a room with 61 books in it.

At some point in the evening, Viola set her book on her knee and reached up and began removing the hair pins, which she did at the end of every day, a small private ritual she had observed since she first put her hair up at 15. She was not thinking about August watching her. She was thinking about the chapter she had just finished, and whether the next one would be as good, and whether her trunks had been brought into the east bedroom or were still in the front room.

She removed the pins one by one and set them on the arm of the chair and her hair came down. She became aware that August had stopped reading. She looked at him. He was looking at her hair, not staring. August was not a person who stared, which she had understood from the letters, and which was confirmed in person, but looking with the focused attention he brought to things he found interesting.

Her hair was brown and thick and had unpinned a quality that she had never found flattering and that various people over the years had described in terms she had not welcomed. Wild, unruly, too much, she said in the tone she used for delivering the difficult information first. I am not pretty. I thought you should know that again in person. He set his book down.

He got up from the chair. Viola watched him stand and cross the room toward her and was uncertain for a moment what he was doing. He did not say anything. He went behind her chair. She heard him pull something from his coat pocket. A comb, she realized when she felt the first stroke of it through her hair.

A comb he had been carrying in his pocket. And the significance of this was so clear and specific that she sat very still with it. He had been carrying a comb. He had thought about her hair. He had thought about it enough to carry a comb on the day she arrived, which meant he had thought about it before she arrived, which meant the sentence about the braid had landed exactly where it was sent.

He combed her hair, not quickly, not peruncterally, with the same specific attention he brought to everything. Working through the ends first and then upward, the way you work through something tangled by starting at the outside and working in rather than pulling from the top and making it worse. Violet sat in the chair and felt this and said nothing.

Then he began to braid. Not the tight, practical braid she made in the morning. The braid that was about keeping the hair under management and out of the way. Something else. A braid that moved in a different direction, that incorporated the hair differently, that took more care. He worked slowly. The fire crackled outside.

The September night pressed its cold against the windows. Inside, August braided Viola’s hair like a ceremony. She did not look at him while he worked because she could not see him. He was behind her, but she was aware of his hands in her hair and the specific and unhurrieded attention of those hands, and she thought he read the sentence about the braid 6 months ago in March, and he has been thinking about it since March, and he carried a comb in his pocket today, and now he is braiding my hair.

And none of this is what I said when I said I am not pretty. None of this is arguing with me. He is not telling me I am wrong. He is showing me what he sees, which is not the same thing as telling me the assessment is incorrect. And which is, she understood now, significantly better than being told she was wrong. The braid took a long time.

August did not rush it, and Viola did not ask him to hurry, because hurrying would have changed what it was. When it was done, he stepped around to the front of the chair so she could see him. He was holding the end of the braid he had just finished. He said, “Do you have a ribbon?” She said, “In my trunk.” He said, “I will get it.

” She said, “You do not have to.” He said, “I know.” He got the ribbon from her trunk and came back and tied the end of the braid with it and then stepped back and looked at his work with the specific critical attention of a person who makes things and is assessing whether he has made the thing correctly.

He said, “You should look at it.” She said, “I cannot see the back of my own head.” He said, “I know.” He went to the east bedroom and came back with the small hand mirror from her trunk, which she had packed in a particular place in a particular way, and which he had found correctly, which meant he had paid attention to how she had arranged her things when they brought the trunk in, which was, she thought, a level of attention to detail that she recognized because she had it herself, and rarely encountered it in others. He held the mirror at the right

angle. Viola looked at the braid. It was not the tight, practical braid. It was something more careful than that. Something that moved through her hair in a way she had not seen on herself before. A braid that was, and she was deciding the words slowly, carefully, because she was precise about words, beautiful.

She looked at the braid in the mirror and then looked at August, who had made it, and he was watching her look at it with the expression of someone who has made something and is waiting to hear whether the making was right. She said, “Where did you learn this?” He said, “My mother. She had very long hair.

She taught me in case I ever needed to know.” He had been carrying this competence for 34 years and had waited for a situation that called for it. Viola sat with the braid and the mirror and August and thought about the sentence she had written in her third letter. I also braid my hair every morning, and I am not sure why I am telling you this.

She understood now why she had told him. She had told him because she was a person who noticed things and said what she noticed. And she had noticed when she was writing the letter that the hair was a thing she thought about, a thing that was specific to her, a thing that was unlike the six languages and the water pump, not practical and not efficient, but simply hers.

And she had wanted him to know something that was simply hers before she arrived. August had heard this and had come to meet it with his hands. She said, “I am not pretty. She said it the way she had always said it, plainly as a fact, without fishing for disagreement.” He looked at her. He said, “You said that.” She said, “I know.

” He said, “I heard you.” She said, “But you braided my hair anyway.” He said, “I braided your hair because of the sentence in the letter, the one about not knowing why you were telling me.” She said, “What about it?” He said, “A person who tells you something and does not know why they are telling you is telling you the most important thing.

” She thought about this. He said, “I did not braid your hair to tell you that you are pretty.” She said, “Then why?” He said, “To show you that your hair is worth the time it takes to do it right.” She looked at him for a long time. She said, “That is a different thing entirely.” August agreed that it was a different thing.

He did not say anything more about it that evening. He went to his chair and picked up his book. And Viola sat with her braid and her mirror and her book and the fire and the 61 books and the rebuilt east wall and the man who had carried a comb in his pocket. And she thought, “I have been telling people I am not pretty for 18 years as a way of saying the difficult thing first and getting the disappointment over with.

I have been treating it as information.” He treated it as a different kind of information as the beginning of a conversation about what I am rather than what I am not. This is a significant distinction. This is possibly the most significant thing anyone has done in response to something I have said. Vio and August were married in October by the same minister who came through the Laram range on his quarterly circuit and who had married many couples and had not in all those ceremonies encountered one where the bride arrived with her hair

braided in a way that suggested someone had paid specific and careful attention to how it should be done. He did not comment on this. He performed the ceremony. August Brennan put a ring on Viola Marsh’s finger and the minister said the words and that was the formal part of it which was not the part that mattered most.

August continued to braid her hair not every morning. In the mornings she did the tight practical braid herself because the morning was for work and the tight practical braid was efficient. But in the evenings when the work was done and the fire was going and the books were out, he would sometimes pick up the comb and she would settle in the chair and he would work through her hair the way he worked through everything with patience and attention and the specific care of a person who understands that some things are worth taking the time to do right.

She had not asked him to do this. He had decided to do it. The distinction mattered to her. She added 63 books to the Homestead Library in the first year. August reorganized the shelves twice to accommodate them, not by title or author, but by the same system she used at the Garfield Library, by subject, and then by the order in which the subjects spoke to each other.

He had never considered organizing them this way. He did it because she showed him the logic, and the logic was correct. Viola found in this and in many subsequent things that August was a person who adopted better systems when he encountered them, which she considered one of the most useful qualities a person could have and one of the rarest.

August Brennan had not expected when he wrote Come Anyway, in April of 1871 that Viola would come and reorganize his library and expand it by 63 books and teach him a better way to organize the kitchen and tell him about the six languages and fix the water intake on the kitchen pump in the third month without making any observation about having done so beyond.

The pump was running slow. I fixed it. He had not expected to love her because he had not expected love to be the category that applied to what he was looking for. He had been looking for a person. He had found one. The love had been an additional development that he had noted over the first year with the same attention he gave everything carefully, with gratitude, and without surprise at what a good thing felt like when you finally had it.

Viola wrote in her journal. In the second winter, I have told August that I am not pretty approximately 40 times since we met, once per month as an average, and he has not argued with me once. He does not say that I am wrong. He does not say that I am pretty and simply do not see it. He braids my hair. He carries the comb.

He found my ribbon in the specific place in the trunk where I had packed it, which means he was paying attention when I was not. I have spent 29 years saying I am not pretty to get the assessment out of the way before it could be used against me. I have met August, the man who heard that sentence and thought, “Yes, and here is the comb.

” I do not know if this is love exactly. I know that it is the most specific and accurate response anyone has ever given to something I said, and I know that specific and accurate have always been the things I valued most. August, for his part, had begun to understand something about Viola that her letters had suggested, and her presence confirmed.

She said, “I am not pretty the way a person says I have one leg shorter than the other, or I am left-handed.” It was a fact about her that she had been carrying for a long time, and had organized her life around compensating for. He had not been trying to argue with the fact when he braided her hair.

He had been trying to show her something that he had seen from the beginning, which was not about pretty at all. That her hair, like the rest of her, the six languages and the water pump, and the sentence she had written without knowing why, was specific and unusual and worth time. He had simply shown this with his hands, because words were not the right tool for the showing.

August had 61 books and could have found words. He had been right to use his hands.