Tough Tarbell Trivia

[Rob Wick]

Both Susan and Steve nailed it. Tarbell never learned to use a typewriter until the early 1940s. Normally, she wrote her early drafts by hand (with rather atrocious handwriting, I might add) and then it was typed by a secretary. When she became a freelance writer she would write out her first draft and then speak into a dictaphone, which would then be typed by her secretary for her to edit. During World War II Tarbell couldn't find a secretary and so she taught herself to use a typewriter. Given that she was ordered to remain in bed because of a heart ailment, she used the time she had to improve her skills.

In the prologue to my book, I write the following:

For a woman afflicted by what she called “Mr. Parkinson,” and whose handwriting on a good day was often illegible, not being able to communicate could have silenced her voice permanently. Tarbell, drawing on an innate, almost superhuman strength, gamely fought back. “I had a heart attack [which was] supposed to kill me, but I refused to die!” she wrote in 1943, in a handwritten and surprisingly legible message with which she had obviously struggled to make readable.

She even taught herself to type, although as one looks at her letters, her output would charitably be called “unique” as she often had to creatively combine keys (such as the period and capital “I” to make an exclamation point) in order to complete a letter. She refused to be silenced. She laid in her bed, or for the few hours her doctors allowed her to sit up at a table, and poured her enervated heart out to those remaining friends who were still alive. To one of her closest, John S. Philips, Tarbell wrote, “What disturbs me most [is] that I am so slow. If I could write quickly I would have a lot of fun for to my surprise I can compose on the machine, quite as well as with pen.”

Best
Rob