The Button Box: A Daughter's Loving Memoir of Mrs. George S. Patton PDF
Preview The Button Box: A Daughter's Loving Memoir of Mrs. George S. Patton
The Button Box University of Missouri Press Columbia and London The Button Box A Daughter’s Loving Memoir of Mrs. George S. Patton Ruth Ellen Patton Totten Edited by James Patton Totten Foreword by Carlo W. D’Este Copyright © 2005 by The Curators ofthe University ofMissouri University ofMissouri Press,Columbia,Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States ofAmerica All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library ofCongress ISBN 0-8262-1576-9 ™This paper meets the requirements ofthe American National Standard for Permanence ofPaper for Printed Library Materials,Z39.48,1984. Designer:Jennifer Cropp Typesetter:Crane Composition,Inc. Printer and binder:Thomson-Shore,Inc. Typefaces:Minion and Snell Roundhand Contents Foreword,by Carlo W.D’Este vii Introduction 1 Part I Chapter 1.Granfer Ayer and Ellie 5 Chapter 2.“Like Birds on a Telephone Wire” 18 Chapter 3.Growing Up 29 Chapter 4.The Pattons 35 Chapter 5.Georgie 66 Part II Chapter 6.Orange Blossoms 85 Chapter 7.The Great War 102 Chapter 8.Camp Meade and Fort Myer 121 PartIII Chapter 9.Schofield Barracks 145 Chapter 10.Legendes Hawaiiennes 177 Chapter 11.“The Debutante Racket” 231 Chapter 12.Hawaii Revisited 247 Chapter 13.Trouble in Paradise 260 Chapter 14.Europe Before the War 288 Chapter 15.Visiting Firemen 301 Chapter 16.Long Shadows 321 PartIV Chapter 17.“A Helluva Way to Die” 343 Chapter 18.I Hide in Songs 354 Chapter 19.Happy Days 380 This page intentionally left blank Foreword by Carlo W. D’Este Ruth Ellen Patton Totten’s The Button Boxis an engaging memoir ofthe life of an extraordinary woman: her mother,Beatrice Banning Ayer,who was the daughter ofFrederick Ayer,a self-made New England millionaire entrepreneur. Growing up in wealth and privilege,Beatrice Ayer was an accomplished eques- trian, a skilled racing sailor, a talented musician and songwriter, and later in her life,a published author.By the age of eighteen,when she was first intro- duced into Boston society,Beatrice had matured into a confident,independent, strong-willed woman.Her father expected she would one day marry a man of proper social standing. Instead, Beatrice gave her heart to a young dyslexic Californian by the name ofGeorge S.Patton. Her courtship by Georgie,as his family and close friends called him,began in 1902 and continued while he was a cadet at West Point.Frederick Ayer quite liked young Patton but deplored the prospect ofhis daughter marrying a lowly career Army officer with little money and few prospects in an era when Yankees like Ayer thought of soldiering as the last refuge of scoundrels,a profession of the “brutal and licentious mercenary.” Obsessed with a deeply held conviction that his destiny was to become a great battlefield commander,and that he would one day lead an army in a des- perate battle,Patton steadfastly resisted Frederick Ayer’s attempts to persuade him that he could have a successful civilian career ofhis own choosing.Failing that, Ayer turned his attention to dissuading Beatrice from marrying young Patton;and when that too failed,he vetoed the marriage.In response,his head- strong daughter locked herselfin her bedroom and staged a hunger strike that soon led to her father’s capitulation,and his blessing of the marriage.After a lavish wedding that was one of the noteworthy social events of 1910 on the fashionable North Shore ofMassachusetts,Beatrice Ayer Patton entered into a new way of life for which nothing could have adequately prepared her. The vii viii Foreword young woman who had been the toast of Boston suddenly found herself an Army wife. The life ofa Cavalry officer’s spouse in the “Old Army”ofthe early twentieth century was one of hardship and habitually Spartan living conditions.On the remote Cavalry posts of the American West where her husband was assigned the days were regulated primarily by the evocative sounds of the bugle and of horses.When the Pattons arrived at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1913, traces of the old frontier army were still in evidence,including some grizzled veterans ofthe Indian wars of the nineteenth century. A sign on the parade ground read: “Officers will not shoot buffalo from the windows oftheir quarters.By order of the Commanding Officer.” For a time Beatrice questioned seriously if she was cut out for such an exis- tence.Ruth Ellen writes that “She was beginning to feel she was a terrible fail- ure as an Army wife...It all seemed very wild and crude and savage.” The story ofBeatrice Patton’s epiphany in the wild,open spaces ofKansas and how it changed her life forever is one of the most heartwarming anecdotes in this memoir.Henceforth,Beatrice not only embraced her new way of life with the same passion she brought to every endeavor she ever undertook, but as Ruth Ellenwrites,“Her inner eye had been opened...She had discovered the whole world.” Beatrice’s role in Patton’s life was indispensable,and throughout their tur- bulent thirty-five-year marriage her influence upon her flamboyant,mercurial husband was profound. She was also fiercely protective. Shortly after World War I Beatrice demonstrated the same warrior spirit as her husband at a white- tie dinner in Washington, D.C. As Beatrice waited in the foyer while Patton parked their car,a stout,unmistakably deskbound officer began making snide remarks about him.“Just look at the little boys they are promoting to colonel these days; look at that young chicken still wet behind the ears, wearing a colonel’s eagle,”he complained.The next thing Beatrice remembered was sit- ting astride the officer’s shoulders, banging his head on the black-and-white marble floor tiles.It took Patton and another officer to pull her off the dazed officer. Although he is not the principal character,the book also reveals a great deal about George S.Patton as a father and husband.As Ruth Ellen has noted,her father is “a twice-told tale,and Ma is a tale that has never been told.” Ruth Ellen Patton Totten was a singular, outspoken, and resolute woman with an irreverent sense of humor.I first met her in 1992 at the Patton family home in South Hamilton,Massachusetts,while researching my biography of her father. She not only told me about her parents and her late husband, an Army general,but also spoke thoughtfully about herself.I learned ofher photo- Foreword ix graphic memory,her belief in reincarnation,and her philosophy of life.Both George and Beatrice Patton believed passionately in reincarnation, and that conviction seemed to rule Ruth Ellen’s life.Death to her was merely a passage to a new life in another time and place.My visit with her remains one of the most exceptional and unforgettable days ofmy own life. The reader will find this book poignant, amusing, and enormously enter- taining.For example,the anecdote the author relates of how her father taught her and her sister,Beatrice,to memorize and recite his ribald version of“Itsy Bitsy Spider” in front of a roomful of eclectic characters like Ellie, with her mass of tinkling bracelets,and the elderly lady with an ear trumpet,remains the most uproariously funny tale I have ever read. Originally written for the edification and amusement ofher family,is the in- sightful portrait of a remarkable American family.Its publication will serve as a lasting testament to a very unique woman, to a bygone era we will never again see,and as a portrait ofsome ofthe most interesting characters that one could hardly invent any better in an E.L.Doctorow novel.
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