Helping Doctoral Students Write

Pedagogies for supervision 2nd Edition

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Helping Doctoral Students Write

Helping Doctoral Students Write is a proven approach to effective doctoral writ-

ing. By treating research as writing and writing as research, the authors offer
pedagogical strategies for doctoral supervisors that will assist the production of
well-argued and lively dissertations.
It is clear that many doctoral candidates find research writing complicated and
difficult, but the advice they receive often glosses over the complexities of writing
and/or locates the problem in the writer. Kamler and Thomson provide a highly
effective framework for scholarly work that is located in personal, institutional and
cultural contexts.
The pedagogical approach developed in the book is based on the notion of
writing as a social practice. This approach allows supervisors to think of doctoral
writers as novices who need to learn new ways with words as they enter the dis-
cursive practices of scholarly communities. This involves learning sophisticated
writing practices with specific sets of conventions and textual characteristics. The
authors offer supervisors practical advice on helping with commonly encountered
writing tasks such as the proposal, the journal abstract, the literature review and
constructing the dissertation argument.
The first edition of this book has helped many academics and thousands of
research students produce better written material. Now fully updated, the second
edition includes:

• examples from a broader range of academic disciplines;

• a new chapter on writing journal articles from the thesis;
• more advice on reading and note-taking, performance and conferences;
• further information on developing a personal academic writing style; and
• advice on the use of social media (blogs, tweets and wikis) to create trans-
disciplinary and trans-national networks and conversations.

The discussion of the complexities of forming a scholarly identity is illustrated

throughout by stories and writings of actual doctoral researchers.
Kamler and Thomson present a persuasive and proven argument that uni-
versities must move away from simply auditing supervision to supporting the
development of scholarly research communities. Any supervisor keen to help their
students develop as academics will find the ideas and practical solutions presented
in this book fascinating and insightful reading.

Barbara Kamler is an Emeritus Professor at Deakin University, Australia.

Pat Thomson is Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Advanced
Studies at The University of Nottingham, UK.
Helping Doctoral
Students Write

Pedagogies for supervision

Second edition

Barbara Kamler and

Pat Thomson
Second edition published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 B. Kamler and P. Thomson
The right of B. Kamler and P. Thomson to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2006
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kamler, Barbara.
Helping doctoral students write : strategies for supervision /
Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson.—Second edition.
pages cm
1. Dissertations, Academic. I. Thomson, Pat, 1948– II. Title.
LB2369.K313 2014
808'.02—dc23
2013035149

ISBN: 978–0–415–82348–7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978–0–415–82349–4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–1–315–81363–9 (ebk)

Typeset in Galliard
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
Contents

List of figures and tables vi

Preface vii
Introduction x

1 Putting doctoral writing centre stage 1

2 Writing the doctorate, writing the scholar 14

3 Persuading an octopus into a jar 30

4 Getting on top of the research literatures 49

5 Reconsidering the personal 67

6 A linguistic toolkit for supervisors 89

7 Structuring the dissertation argument 113

8 Publishing out of the thesis 138

9 Institutionalizing doctoral writing practices 158

References 174
Index 184
Figures and tables

Figures
2.1 Fairclough’s model of discourse 23
3.1 Lucinda’s dinner party 41
4.1 Detailed questions for note-taking 55
5.1 Hyland’s resources for building writer stance 84
6.1 From verb forms to noun forms 92
6.2 Modality markers 104
6.3 Theme analysis: Mia’s first draft 107
6.4 Theme analysis: Mia’s second draft 108
6.5 Theme analysis: Calvin’s first draft 109
6.6 Theme analysis: Calvin’s second draft 110
6.7 Zigzag patterning in Theme 111
7.1 Storyboarding the thesis structure 124
7.2 Four moves in a thesis abstract 126
7.3 Meta-commentary template exercises 131
7.4 Moves and signposts 132
8.1 The three layers of the journal article 139
8.2 Four moves in a published paper 149
8.3 Questions to ask of abstracts 151

Table
7.1 Genres in IMRAD 117
Preface

We did not intend to write this book. We began having a conversation about
doctoral writing as a result of a presentation Pat gave to a doctoral summer school
at which Barbara was present as a university staff member. Pat’s discussion of the
writing decisions she had made in her PhD thesis sparked lively conversation.
We discovered that we thought in similar ways about writing, despite the dif-
ferences in our backgrounds and professional training. Barbara was trained as an
educational linguist and after her PhD moved to combine this with critical dis-
course analysis in a range of research projects on gender and school literacy. She
describes herself as a teacher and researcher of writing across the lifespan, most
recently focusing on cultural narratives of aging and cross-generational literacy
pedagogies. Her interest in writing is deeply connected to issues of social justice,
identity and representation. Pat is a late career academic, having spent most of her
life as a school principal and school system policy maker; she combined journalism
teaching with extra-curricular activities in print and radio media. She describes
herself as a scholar committed to social justice and her research focuses on policy,
questions of power, place and identity, and democratizing education. Her interest
in writing stems from being a compulsive writer herself.
We came together in a serendipitous manner, but our mutual concerns about
the relative scarcity of well-theorized material about doctoral supervision and
writing have kept us in dialogue.
We began writing this book after giving a performance at a conference about
‘writing up’. We explain our exasperation with this term in the first chapter. But
sometime during the writing of the paper, we realized we had the makings of a
book. We gave a series of workshops in Canada, Australia and South Africa to help
us sort out key moves in the production of a doctoral thesis – working with litera-
tures, writing abstracts, constructing arguments and writing conference papers.
At every workshop there were more people than we expected, and this affirmed
our belief that doctoral writing was a kind of present absence in the landscape of
doctoral education. It was something that everybody worried about, but about
which there was too little systematic debate and discussion.
We interviewed our colleagues and our students as well as workshop partici-
pants, and their voices appear in the text in semi-fictionalized accounts. We have
viii Preface

adopted a convention of combining actual words and events drawn from actual
interviews with fictional characters. We also use the writing of students, both
exemplary and problematic texts, but modify these so that they are not identifi-
able. This is partly about ensuring confidentiality, but it is also about trying to
capture the patterns, emotions and experiences at issue rather than anything spe-
cific. For that reason we have not given citations for any of the student writings.
Rather, we focus on the way in which they have written and argued. Fictionalizing
accounts has also given us more licence to write imaginatively in ways that we
hope will resonate with readers (see Clough, 2002). We thank our students and
colleagues for the gift of their words and hope that they agree with the ways we
have represented them.
We want to acknowledge from the outset that actually getting words on the
page is difficult. Anxiety about how to begin a piece of writing is not confined
to doctoral students, nor does it necessarily go away once the doctorate is com-
pleted. We have separately and together made several starts on various parts of
this book accompanied by much pacing, tea-drinking and cleaning. Since one
of us lives in England and the other in Australia, we have worked through these
periods by simply following our own advice – just sit and write anything! When
we have worked together it has become obvious that one of us takes more time
considering each section of text, while the other tends to write furiously and then
spends time reflecting on it. Nevertheless, each of us has made several false starts
and we have ultimately written ourselves into the production of this text, just as
doctoral students do.

The second edition

We wrote the first edition of this book eight years ago. Since then, there has been
a significant increase in the attention paid to doctoral education, doctoral supervi-
sion and doctoral writing. Indeed, we have contributed to this burgeoning litera-
ture ourselves, separately and together. We have edited a collection on pedagogies
for publication (Aitchison, Kamler and Lee, 2010) and two doctoral companions
which provide a guide to the key debates in research methods and doctoral litera-
tures (Thomson and Walker, 2010; Walker and Thomson, 2010). Most recently
we have written a book on writing for peer reviewed journals (Thomson and
Kamler, 2013) and continue to run workshops, courses and supervise doctoral
research, where we have learnt a great deal more about the practices of doctoral
writing.
We have people to thank. We have already acknowledged how important our
students and workshop participants have been to this book. Without them we
would literally have had nothing to learn and say. But other people have helped
us too. We would like to put on record our intellectual debt to Bill Green and the
late Alison Lee whose work so firmly wrote doctoral pedagogies and academic
literacies on to the scholarly map in Australia. We also want to thank Philip Mudd
at Routledge for his early enthusiasm, energetic support and continued patience.
 Preface ix

We have also been helped by critical friends along the way: thank you to Lesley
Farrell and Rod Maclean for their close reading and productive suggestions for
the first edition. Then of course there are our partners, Randy and Greg, who
have endured endless reports of progress on the book (or not) and fed and nur-
tured us during our intense periods of writing together in each other’s homes.
We know that the pleasure of completion is common to writers everywhere – be
they doctoral researchers or supervisors. But we actually don’t want to be finished
with the topic. We would be delighted to hear from others about their supervision
experiences and pedagogic strategies to support writing: we see this as part of an
ongoing dialogue about how to help doctoral students write.
Introduction

Since writing the first edition we have not changed our view that supervision is
both challenging and potentially anxiety-making. The exponential development
of satisfaction surveys, career destination league tables and the like has added to
funding pressures and other forms of audit. As the number of doctoral places
continues to increase, so too does the concern about what completed ‘doctors’
will do in the future, and where they will work. Many supervisors are themselves
early career researchers, and while their institutions increasingly provide ‘train-
ing’ for doctoral students, there is still little formal support for supervisors. Many
have heavy teaching loads and need support, time and space to develop their own
research profiles.
Despite this pressure on supervisors, supervision remains the primary way in
which doctoral researchers are educated. The one-to-one meetings between doc-
toral candidates and their supervisors are not simply conversations in the office.
They are THE key way in which the doctorate is achieved. A doctoral award is
always a collaborative endeavour, but one which is a private and somewhat mys-
terious process occurring behind closed doors.
We understand the burgeoning literature on supervision as an attempt to meta-
phorically open these closed doors, to provide a forum in which this most impor-
tant relationship can be understood. Some higher education researchers investi-
gate approaches to supervision activities, developing heuristics to describe various
aspects of practice (Eley and Murray, 2009; Lee, 2011; Peelo, 2011; Wisker,
2012). This is not our intention in this book. We are not examining the supervi-
sion relationship per se. We see our contribution as providing a resource about
writing for supervisors to use with their students.
We refer frequently to Paré (2010a, 2010b, 2011; Paré et al., 2009, 2011)
who has systematically, over a long period of time, examined how supervisors
talk about writing with their students. He shows the uncertainties that supervi-
sors feel about dealing with the complexities of writing and the variously help-
ful/unhelpful feedback that they offer. His work convinces us that this book is
still needed. Supervisors need a range of strategies that they can use to facilitate
quality writing.
In this book, we use the British and Australian nomenclature of supervision and
 Introduction xi

supervisor to describe the doctoral ‘teacher’ and we refer to the person undertak-
ing the doctorate as the doctoral researcher. We also use the term ‘student’ to sig-
nify the institutional power relations at work in the supervisory relationship. But
our preference is to define doctoral candidates in terms of their work (research)
and to acknowledge the increasing diversity of ages, experience and professional
status they bring to doctoral study. We use the terms thesis and dissertation inter-
changeably to describe the summative research text presented for examination.
In doing so, we recognize that there are cultural differences in the ways different
countries organize their doctorates.
In Britain and Australia, for example, the dominant pedagogical relationship
is with a supervisor and a co- or associate supervisor with whom students meet
on a regular basis in tutorials. The new preferred model in Britain, however, also
involves a first year of intensive research training coursework and, increasingly,
Australian students are taking some compulsory studies. In North America, by
contrast, students must pass a range of coursework subjects as part of the degree;
the dissertation research is overseen by a committee who act as both examiner and
guide, with one adviser providing more intense support. Examination in Britain
is most often conducted by one internal and one external examiner and a viva (a
confidential oral examination). In Australia, two examiners external to the uni-
versity provide a written report, with a third being called in if there is a dispute.
There is no viva.
These differences are not insignificant. The kind of audience and the kind of
critical scrutiny the dissertation receives in examination will influence how stu-
dents write. It clearly matters if judgments are made by academics inside the
university (US) or outside (Australia) or a combination of the two (UK); whether
a doctoral defence occurs in the private context of a viva (UK, New Zealand) or
committee defence (US), or in a more public, adversarial forum as in Scandina-
vian and northern European countries. Our argument in this book, however, is
that whatever the form of examination, thesis structure or supervision – whether
by a committee of advisers or individual/multiple supervisors – greater attention
to writing the doctorate is required.
In this book we join the notion of supervision with that of pedagogy. In English
speaking countries, and particularly in the UK, the term pedagogy is often under-
stood as technique. It is used interchangeably with teaching method. By contrast,
the non-Anglo European tradition, which we adopt, understands pedagogy to be
a practice which encompasses the students, the teacher, the context, knowledge,
skills, attitudes, values, assessment – and the ways these come together in an iden-
tifiable pattern or patterns. Pedagogic features include the way in which informa-
tion is made available, the structuring and pacing of activities, the language and
conceptual frameworks on offer, and the kinds of relationships that are permitted,
fostered and prohibited. Pedagogies can manifest care or indifference, offer more
or less agency to the ‘learner’ and be more or less inclusive of difference.
We argue that it is imperative for supervision pedagogies to be designed,
rather than remain as Ward (2013) says, ‘accidental’. That is, unintended, inex-
xii Introduction

plicit, taken for granted. Ward suggests that it is the fact that pedagogies are not
attended to which creates anxiety and failure for doctoral candidates. Supervisors,
of course, understand this at some level. They do know that they don’t just chat
with doctoral students and that there is a pedagogical intent in the supervision
conversation. However, the lack of institutional and disciplinary attention to the
pedagogical features of supervision leaves supervisors with relatively few educa-
tional resources to call on, other than their own experience of being supervised.
A major challenge we have faced in the writing of this book arises from the
difficulty of speaking across diversity. We have set ourselves the task of writing
something that speaks to supervisors in different disciplines, in different countries
and in different institutions. Indeed, the doctorate itself is diversifying, with mul-
tiple versions of the award, and what is an acceptable ‘product’ for examination.
However, we suggest that, despite these differences, questions of writing are too
often reduced to grammatical and stylistic problems, rather than, as we argue, a
matter of textwork/identitywork. We hope that readers will find things in the text
that do speak to their contexts.
It is probably important to say what we are not doing. We are focused only
on the writing that doctoral researchers do in relation to their thesis. We do not
cover curriculam vitae, progress reports or any of the other documentation that is
part of the doctoral experience. Nor do we attempt to cover all of the disciplines.
We have extended our examples from education (in the first edition) to include
more of the social sciences. While we have been asked to include the sciences in
this text, we actually feel they deserve a separate text, since the writing demands
and relationships are very different to the social sciences and humanities. Good-
son’s book (2012) Becoming an academic writer: 50 exercises for paced, powerful
and productive writing is strongly oriented to the behavioural sciences. Gustavii
(2012) in How to prepare a scientific doctoral dissertation based on research articles
specifically addresses the needs of biology, medicine and technology.
We are mindful that many supervisors are concerned about how to support
students whose first language is not English, be they from home or abroad. We
have paid more attention to their needs, especially in Chapters 6 and 7. We refer
supervisors to Paltridge and Starfield (2007) whose book is specifically geared to
the specificities and challenges of thesis writing in a second language. Curry and
Lillis’ (2013) work on academic literacies and publishing (written specifically for
multilingual scholars) will also be highly useful. There are other texts, such as
Graff and Birkenstein’s They say, I say (2010), which offer more fine-grained strat-
egies for making explicit the moves that matter in successful academic writing.
We have assumed that busy supervisors will be pleased to have a book that is
based in scholarship and research, but which is, for the most part, written with
a light touch. By this we mean that we have not heavily referenced the text, nor
have we elaborated the nuances of the various arguments we make. We have pro-
vided some signposts to the broader literatures that underpin our position, but we
do not assume that readers will necessarily share our views.
We see this book as useable, but it is not a manual, a how-to text. We don’t
 Introduction xiii

offer tips and tricks which assume that resolving the problems doctoral research-
ers face is simply a question of technique. Rather, we approach doctoral writ-
ing as a complex tangle of identity, discipline and institutional conventions and
demands. It is possible, we think, to dip in and out of the chapters, rather than
read the book from cover to cover, but we do suggest that it is worth looking at
Chapters 1 and 2. These are where we spell out our theoretical premises and set
the framework for our approach to doctoral writing and supervision pedagogies.
We have amended these chapters in this edition to reflect the development of our
conceptual framework. We have also used the notion of a community of practice
(Wenger, 1998), which we hope is already familiar to many readers, to bridge our
thinking with that commonly used in the field.
In the third and fourth chapters we get to grips with work on literatures, adding
in a new section on reading and note-taking. In Chapter 5 we get up close and
personal with the pronoun ‘I’. Chapter 6, substantially revised from the first edi-
tion, provides a set of linguistic tools to help students make their texts more per-
suasive. In Chapter 7 we consider how students can structure the dissertation as
an argument, now with an additional section on the use of storyboarding. Chap-
ter 8, new to this edition, examines publishing, both as the thesis and in addition
to the thesis. In our final chapter we examine ways in which doctoral writing can
become part of an institutional culture and practice, with a new section on social
media and public engagement.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 1

Putting doctoral writing

centre stage

Getting the dissertation written can be as problematic for supervisors as it is

for doctoral students. Our conversations with colleagues suggest that the issue
of writing often remains a problem from the start to the finish of candidature.
Supervisors describe students as either ‘being able to write’ – or not. Frustrations
over turgid prose, badly structured arguments and laboured literature reviews are
common. Supervisors have numerous questions. Why can’t my students write an
argument? How can I help them say things more simply? What can I do to get my
students to write more logically? Why is their writing so tentative?
There are few places to which supervisors can refer for discussion specifically about
doctoral writing, few places which might assist them to think differently about the
textual practices of scholarship. This book begins to address this gap. It is written
primarily for supervisors, although doctoral researchers may also find it of use.
But this book is not a self-help manual. It is not a how-to-do-writing-supervi-
sion compendium. Supervision is a complex pedagogical practice. It is a partner-
ship between an experienced and an aspiring scholar which shifts over the number
of years it takes for the research to be done and the thesis to be written. The
supervisor begins with expertise in all aspects of the process – the literature that
must be read, the design of fieldwork or textwork, the production of the thesis.
Over time, the supervisor must relinquish control and the doctoral researcher
must use their growing expertise to speak and write with authority. A ‘student’
identity is gradually replaced by that of ‘researcher/scholar’.
This is not a straightforward process. It does not proceed in simple linear steps.
As we will show in this book the process of becoming a scholar is irrevocably an
integral part of writing the dissertation. However, most of the self-help books
written for students focus on textual matters and largely ignore the complex
tangle of emotional and intellectual work that is the doctorate. Supervisors, of
course, are acutely aware of the personal dilemmas their students face, although
they do not necessarily connect these to ongoing textual struggles. Our intention
is to put the enmeshed nature of textwork and identitywork (addressed in detail
in Chapter 2) at the centre of supervision pedagogy.
In this book we avoid the direct address – the ‘you can/must/ought/will ben-
efit’ of the advice mode. Tempting as it is to tell people what to do, we try instead
2 Putting doctoral writing centre stage

to talk about things that we have done and found useful, and we provide sufficient
detail for readers to imagine how they might use or remake strategies for their
own supervision contexts. We write about pedagogy, the work of teaching and
learning. We draw on: our reading in socio-linguistics, critical discourse analysis,
policy sociology and pedagogical theory; our experiences in doctoral supervision
(not all of them easy); our research into academic writing practices; and our own
writing biographies.
We foreground issues related to language and texts. We object to the ubiqui-
tous term ‘writing up’ as the dominant way to think about writing the disserta-
tion. Instead, we work with notions of ‘research as writing’. We attend closely to
the language used to describe doctoral writing because we believe it shapes not
only how writing is produced, but also the writers themselves.
We therefore offer new metaphors and ways of understanding the labour and
craft of doctoral writing. We foreground writing and writing strategies. We pay
attention to the field of scholarly writing, its genres and conventions. We explore
the connections between academic writing practices and the formation of ‘the
doctoral scholar’. We offer a theorized approach based on current understandings
of writing, identity and social practice. To begin, we interrogate some taken-for-
granted assumptions about ‘writing up’ and the way these have marginalized seri-
ous attention to the practices of doctoral writing.

Talking down ‘writing up’

When doctoral researchers talk about the writing they do in the doctorate, it is
common for them to say ‘Oh, I’m just writing up’. The phrase ‘writing up’ is ubiq-
uitous in the various advice manuals on the market and on websites which proffer
advice about writing. Even some of the most useful books on research writing,
such as Wolcott’s (2001) Writing Up Qualitative Research, embed the phrase
in their title. We object to this way of talking about writing, primarily because it
suggests that writing is ancillary or marginal to the real work of research. First we
do the research, then we ‘write it up’, as if that were a fairly straightforward and
mechanical act of reportage.
Writing, however, is a vital part of the research process. The activity of research
is one that, from the outset, involves writing. Researchers keep notes, jot down
ideas, record observations, summarize readings, transcribe interviews and develop
pieces of writing about specific aspects of their investigation. These writings are
not simply getting things down on paper, but are a process of making meaning
and advancing understandings. Then there are public texts – conference papers,
articles and the thesis itself – all of which do productive work. It is through these
writings that researchers produce knowledge and become members of their vari-
ous scholarly communities.
The phrase ‘writing up’ actually obliterates all this labour and complexity. And
we are not just being picky about words. Our concern is that such ways of speak-
ing have effects. They can actually mislead students about what is entailed in
 Putting doctoral writing centre stage 3

writing the doctorate. A pivotal study by Torrance and Thomas (1994) noted
that students who delay completion, or fail to complete their dissertation, often
do so because of writing-related issues. These students see a ‘strict demarcation
between collecting data, or doing research, and the writing of this material as a
dissertation’ (Torrance and Thomas, 1994: 107); it is this perception that creates
problems for student writers.
Other research findings about the connections between writing and academic
‘success’ (Hendricks and Quinn, 2000; Leibowitz and Goodman, 1997; Lillis, 2001;
Lillis and Turner, 2001) suggest supervisors need to address the writing issues that
actually prevent students from developing productive research writing practices (see
Mullen, 2001). For us, one of these issues is reconceptualizing research writing so
that it is not reduced to ‘writing up’. This ubiquitous metaphor is most commonly
used to denote a distinct phase of post-fieldwork activity. But like Lee (1998), we
contend that the metaphor does important work in making doctoral writing both
natural and invisible. We can state our objections as three propositions:

‘Writing up’ obscures the fact that doctoral writing is thinking. We write to work
out what we think. It’s not that we do the research and then know. It’s that we
write our way to understanding through analysis. We put words on the page, try
them out, see how they look and sound and, in the writing, we see things we had
no idea were there before we started writing. If the goal of research is to make
sense of the data we have produced, and to theorize it in order to develop under-
standing, then writing the research is central to the process of inquiry itself.
‘Writing up’ obscures the fact that producing a dissertation text is hard work. Writ-
ing is physical, emotional and aesthetic labour. Sitting at a keyboard for hours
on end is hard on nerves and bodies. Many scholars carry their scholarship deep
in their psyche, bones and muscles. But the dissertation is also about the craft of
word-play. Choosing words that encapsulate an idea, selecting quotations that
effectively summarize an important point, and making decisions about syntax and
subheadings are all important to how the final text flows and is read. In no way
are these ideas of labour and craft captured in the matter-of-factness of ‘writing
up’. Rather the phrase evokes a glibness: ‘Oh I’ve done the hard work, now I’m
doing the easy bit, I’m just “writing it up”’.
‘Writing up’ obscures the fact that doctoral writing is not transparent. Researchers
do not simply write up ‘the truth’. Language is not a transparent medium through
which we capture and communicate findings and facts are not already there, wait-
ing for the researcher to discover and grab. What writing creates is a particular rep-
resentation of reality. Data is produced in writing, it is not found. And the data and
subsequent written texts are shaped and crafted by the researcher through a multi-
tude of selections about what to include and exclude, foreground and background,
cite and not cite. These choices often have profound ethical dimensions and raise
issues that need the conscious attention of doctoral writers. Such issues are not
even imaginable in the oversimplifying, apparently neutral term ‘writing up’.
4 Putting doctoral writing centre stage

So why do we say ‘writing up’? Tradition, bad habit, misconception? Why not
writing down? Writing over? Writing around? Better yet, why don’t we say ‘I’m
writing my research’, where the present continuous verb writing implies a con-
tinuous process of inquiry through writing? We agree with Laurel Richardson
(1990, 1994) when she says that researching is writing. It is not separate from
the act of researching. Later in the chapter we offer principles that underpin this
alternative to ‘writing up’. But first, we expand our discussion of research writing
by interrogating another misconception about doctoral writing: namely that it is
only a set of skills rather than a situated social practice.

Doctoral writing – just a question of skills?

Whole sections in academic catalogues and entire shelves in bookshops are now
devoted to a new kind of self-help book – the how-to-write-your-dissertation
manual. These invite doctoral researchers to buy advice from experienced scholars
to supplement the assistance given by their own supervisors.
The proliferation of such guidebooks is not simply a savvy niche-marketing
strategy by publishing companies, nor should it be theorized away as an exam-
ple of the democratization of expertise that is characteristic of high modernity
(Giddens, 1991). Rather, as everyone involved with doctoral education knows,
doctoral work is associated with a number of anxieties. Students have numerous
questions. Will the work be good enough? How can all of the relevant literatures
be read in time? What brings all of the data together? How can the research be
organized into 100,000 words? These dissertation primers address these concerns
by offering to ‘skill up’ doctoral researchers.
The problem with a skills-based orientation is that it is founded in a notion
that language is transparent, a straightforward conduit for thought. The process
of writing is simplified into a linear process, where students are exhorted to think
first, then write. They need to plan, get the chapter outline clear, and proceed,
bit by bit, chapter by chapter, as if meaning is already formed prior to the writing.
When a draft is produced, it is treated as if there is no more meaning making to
do. What is required is simply tidying and polishing. The writing process is made
analogous to setting a table – once the cutlery and plates are out of the drawers
and cupboards, it is just a matter of setting them straight.
Problems with writing are then treated in skill-deficit terms. They are located
in individual doctoral researchers who don’t ‘get it’ or don’t ‘have it’, rather than
in the broader disciplinary and institutional contexts in which they write. And the
advice given to solve writing problems often focuses on the surface features of
writing. Spelling, punctuation, grammar or simplified models of text structure or
citation rules are offered because these are the more tangible aspects of academic
writing.
When we first searched research writing websites, we mostly found handy tips
and oversimplified guidelines for writing. This advice indicated not even the most
basic understandings of writing developed in genre-based (Derewianka, 1990) or
 Putting doctoral writing centre stage 5

process approaches (Graves, 1983; Murray, 1982) in the 1980s and 1990s. Here
is a typical, reductive tidbit:

Ask yourself what would have been the perfect paper for you to have read in
order to understand everything you need to know. Then write it . . .
Papers must be understandable and meaningful. Papers are for replication
and understanding . . . Each sentence must be as informative as possible.
Include all relevant information. Never use anything you do not know is
absolutely and totally real. Outline the paper until it is perfectly clear, then
write it . . .
The following list of questions steps you through the major issues which
must be addressed in a research paper. After each question is answered the con-
struction of the research paper is simply developing transitions between items.
(http://www.jsu.edu.depart/psychology/sebac/fac-sch/rm/
Ch4–5.html. Accessed October 2001)

Implicit in such advice is the assumption that writing problems and their solutions
are fairly straightforward, easy to identify and resolve. Since then, a new genera-
tion of online writing centre materials and blogs have been produced, offering
much more nuanced support and strategies and we discuss some of these in the
last chapter. However, there is still a great deal of poor advice around which doc-
toral researchers need help to critique and use selectively. The best people to help
them in this ‘crap detection’ task are their supervisors.
Skills-based books on doctoral writing are also abundant. The oversimplifica-
tion of some approaches is evident in titles such as Completing your doctoral dis-
sertation or master’s thesis in two semesters or less (Ogden, 1993) or Writing your
dissertation in fifteen minutes a day (Bolker, 1998). The contents of such books,
which are intended to give straightforward heuristics, often offer a straightforward
and linear norm for the doctorate, which positions supervisors and supervisees as
deviant if they don’t adhere to the stages set out.
Writing is often given short shrift in such books. The research student’s guide to
success (Cryer, 2001), for example, covers topics such as: liaising with an institu-
tion, settling in as a new student, keeping records, producing reports, develop-
ing skills for creative thinking, producing your thesis and afterwards. Writing is
discussed at various points throughout the text but always in terms of technique,
and the emphasis is on tips ‘that work’.
Even when writing is treated as more than formulaic, a skills orientation still
oversimplifies the textwork involved in authoring a dissertation. For example, in
Writing the winning dissertation (Glatthorn, 1998), a chapter titled ‘Mastering
the academic style’ asks students to follow these steps:

Write a paragraph. Stop and read what was written. Revise that paragraph.
Write another paragraph – and start the cycle all over again.
(Glatthorn, 1998: 109)
6 Putting doctoral writing centre stage

Further on, students are offered the following suggestions for achieving the persona
of a knowledgeable scholar: ‘strive for clarity’, ‘project maturity’, ‘project a sense
of formality’, ‘strike an appropriate balance between confidence and tentativeness’
(Glatthorn, 1998: 112–13). While supervisors might agree with these assertions,
they are presented as commands and the examples provided are framed as correct
and incorrect options. This is not helpful: the issues that underpin difficulties in
writing are rarely as simple as the textual equivalent of whistling a happy tune.
Glatthorn is not unique. Many skills-based books reduce writing to a set of
arbitrary rules and matters of etiquette. By following their seemingly arbitrary
advice, rather than more informed research-based strategies, doctoral researchers
are lured into believing that the winning dissertation will emerge, as if by magic.
There is, however, a rich literature that does treat academic writing as a social
practice and meaning making as a social phenomenon. And it is to these texts we
now turn. Rather than simply ‘talk down’ skills-based approaches, we want to
‘talk up’ the notion of writing as a social practice.

Doctoral writing as a social practice

We see research writing as an institutionally constrained social practice. It is about
meaning making and learning to produce knowledge in particular disciplines and
discourse communities. The distinction between skill and practice is central to our
pedagogies for supervision. While we argue that there is a startling lack of explicit
attention given to writing the doctoral dissertation, the attention that is given is
diminished when it treats writing as a discrete set of decontextualized skills, rather
than as a social practice.
In using the term practice, we are connecting to a scholarly tradition that regards
writing as social action. Here, language is understood as being in use, bound up
with what people actually do in the social and material world. Thus, ways of using
language are not simply idiosyncratic or unique attributes of individual writers.
They are repeated and practised and so become part of the patterned routines
of both individuals and institutions. Lillis (2001) captures well what this shift to
writing as social practice means:

In broad terms, what this entails is that student academic writing, like all
writing, is a social act. That is, student writing takes place within a particu-
lar institution, which has a particular history, culture, values, practices. It
involves a shift away from thinking of language or writing skills as individual
possession, towards the notion of an individual engaged in socially situated
action; from an individual student having writing skills, to a student doing
writing in specific contexts.
(Lillis, 2001: 31)

Moving away from skills-based, deficit models of student writing allows us to

engage the complexity of writing practices that are taking place at degree level in
 Putting doctoral writing centre stage 7

universities (Lea and Street, 2000). There is a body of scholarship which explores
academic writing (but not necessarily doctoral writing) as discipline-specific prac-
tice. Bazerman (1981, 1988) and Myers (1985), for example, explore rhetorical
differences across academic disciplines: Bazerman focuses on the fields of litera-
ture, sociology and biochemistry, Myers on biology. Since the first edition of
this book, this body of work has expanded considerably. There are now studies
of writing in almost all disciplines and from a number of different perspectives
– for example, the writing demands of the practice-based thesis in the visual and
performing arts (Paltridge et al., 2011), the socio-political issues surrounding a
doctoral degree in physics (Li, 2006), the tangle of epistemological, method-
ological and geographical writings in anthropology (Reynolds, 2010) as well as
the development of approaches to embed writing within disciplinary pedagogies
(Deane and O’Neill, 2011).
There are also studies of how graduate students learn to appropriate discourse
conventions in their disciplinary communities (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1985;
Dias and Paré, 2000; Kamler and Maclean, 1997; Prior, 1998). Other research-
ers, mostly UK-based, conduct tutor-led investigations with writers in higher
education. Clark and Ivanic (1997), for example, explore the politics of writing
and identity while Lillis (2001) and Lillis and Curry (2010) examine essayist writ-
ing in higher education from the perspective of non-traditional writers. These are
all helpful perspectives to bring to the study of doctoral writing.
Some texts do look explicitly at research writing. Writing Up Qualita-
tive Research (Wolcott, 2001) is typical of narratives produced by experienced
researchers attempting to make clear the processes that they use when writing.
The emphasis is largely on structure and organization, so chapters focus on how
to make a writing plan and on problems of sorting and presenting data. Impor-
tantly, Wolcott doesn’t just talk about producing the final text, he talks about
writing all the way through the research process. Other chapters discuss keeping
track of references, doing the literature review, making the link to theory and
method, theory as narrative, revising and editing, running out of space, crowding
more in, and getting published. This is very useful. Doing research does involve
being organized, paying attention to scholarly conventions, and being able to
see the production of a thesis or book as a series of steps. We recommend this
book to students, even though we blanch at the title ‘writing up’, because it is an
unpretentious demystification of some important aspects of the research writing
process.
Dissertation writing has also been investigated by qualitative researchers who
research their own writing. Ely et al. (1997), for example, specifically address the
practice of composition. They focus on a variety of types of writing that might
be developed as research texts. They discuss the differences between descriptive
and analytic memos, two different kinds of texts students write in response to
field data or a piece of scholarly reading (Ely et al. 1997: Chapter 4). Their use of
theory to tell a research story rather than the researcher’s narrative being weighed
down by theory (Ely, Vinz et al. 1994: Chapter 5) is very helpful to doctoral
8 Putting doctoral writing centre stage

researchers early in their candidature. Ely and her colleagues present a combina-
tion of theory, handy hints and feminist politics. They discuss support groups
for critically reading each other’s work, getting work published and writing as
self-development. This is another book that we recommend to our students for
its readability and practicality.
Similarly, Garman and Piantanida (2006) offer narratives from an ongoing dis-
sertation writing group. Their notion is that during candidature, doctoral writers
must produce three texts: experiential (about the research, its sites and subjects);
theoretic (about the ways in which meaning is made of the experiential); and dis-
cursive (about the ways in which the literatures are understood and connected to
the research). These three texts eventually become woven into one thesis through
the crafting process. This is an insight which is very helpful to some doctoral
researchers.
Our thinking has also been informed by theorizing about the ethics and epis-
temologies of writing in the social sciences. Sociologists, cultural studies scholars
and anthropologists have, since the ‘crisis in the humanities’, focused on writing
as a social practice which takes place in a particular time/place/tradition. They
situate their arguments both in terms of knowledge (epistemology) and ways
of being in the academy (ontology). They do not eschew skills and technique,
nor handy hints, nor literacy sensibility, but place these within a wider/deeper
frame. Laurel Richardson (1997), in particular, has inspired us to think beyond
‘sociological vérité’, the presentation of data as if style and voice were unimport-
ant. She also encouraged us to eschew ‘the self-centred reflexive style, where the
people studied are treated as garnishes and condiments, tasty only in relationship to
the main course, the sociologist’ (Richardson, 1997: 20).
As well as a proliferation of books on research writing, supervisors will be aware
of an explosion of texts in recent years on supervision (Bartlett and Mercer, 2001;
Benefiel and Holton, 2010; Delamont et al. 1997, 2000; Eley and Murray, 2009;
Lee, 2011; Peelo, 2010; Phillips and Pugh, 1987; Wisker, 2004, 2012). Very few
of these, however, address what we might call a writing-centred supervision; nor do
they provide any extended discussion of dissertation writing as social practice. A scan
of their tables of contents reveals reliance on the notion of ‘writing up’ although
many also talk of the importance of writing throughout the doctoral candidature.

Writing, diversity and doctoral supervision

The need for assistance with writing is greater than ever given the growth in doc-
toral studies and the diversity of doctoral candidates (Pearson, 1999; Thomson
and Walker 2010). The image of the social science doctoral student as a young per-
son, able to devote themselves to full-time study in order to progress into an aca-
demic career, is outdated. In the social sciences in particular, doctoral candidates
are now equally likely to be mid-career professionals as young students straight
from undergraduate work. They are joined by increasing numbers of older candi-
dates who may be seeking a career change, a post-retirement option, or simply to
 Putting doctoral writing centre stage 9

further an area of interest (Leonard et al., 2004). Those who arrive mid-career
come with a wide range of work and life experiences and more than half now
study part-time (Evans, 2002). Increasing numbers study at a distance (Evans
and Pearson, 1999; McWilliam et al., 2002; Park, 2007; Singleton and Session,
2011; Smyth et al. 2001). Doctoral researchers also have various motivations for
undertaking doctoral study and they include members of university staff in both
academic and administrative positions seeking to increase their qualifications.
Many universities in Western countries now actively seek large numbers of stu-
dents from developing countries for income generation, rather than aid, purposes
(Epstein et al., 2008). The addition of students with English language demands,
various histories of undergraduate and postgraduate experience and different cul-
tural norms and expectations creates new pressures on supervision (Casanave and
Li, 2008). Universities have variously provided individual and short-term courses
in English for Academic Purposes (see for example, Cross and O’Loughlin, 2013)
but individual supervisors still have to mediate regulations, expectations and dis-
ciplinary conventions, as we will show in Chapter 2.
The dissertation itself is also diversifying. There is now considerable experi-
mentation with length of doctoral candidature and length of dissertation. There
is more variety in the nature of texts presented as research, with arts-informed and
artefact-based dissertations growing in popularity. PhD by publication is rapidly
becoming prevalent in Europe and Australia and there are increasing demands for
PhD by monograph researchers to publish during their candidature, rather than
after they have graduated. These shifts require new institutional arrangements
and support for supervisors. New practices are required to cater for these new
modes of study, and new genres of writing (see Chapter 9).
Many universities are aware of the need to support supervisors in their work,
but this concern is generally couched in terms of quality assurance and training.
Supervisor workshops are the most common form of intervention, combined with
mentoring schemes. Universities also require supervisors to keep detailed audit
trails of their interactions with students, but this is primarily to avoid student
complaints and litigation. The inclusion of PhD completion rates in government
measures of performance has placed a new emphasis, in countries such as Aus-
tralia and the UK, on ‘getting students through’. But the press by universities
for documentation and smooth passage from enrolment to graduation does not
necessarily enhance what actually happens in pedagogical practice.
Supervision remains an intensely private affair. Very few universities offer the
kind of continuous professional development taken for granted by school teachers
in some education systems, and opportunities to discuss diverse methods of work-
ing with doctoral writers are rare. Writing and language, while a significant issue,
is something for supervisors and their students to deal with by themselves.
When assistance is provided for writing, it most often occurs outside the super-
visory relationship. In Australia and the UK, for example, assistance is offered
through specialist support units, which are often located outside academic facul-
ties (there is further discussion of these writing initiatives in Chapter 9). In the
10 Putting doctoral writing centre stage

best scenario, learning support personnel are connected to specific disciplines.

Academic writing assistance is framed as discipline-specific practice and overt links
are made between the teaching of writing and the contexts in which students
write (see for example Cadman, 2000, Lee and Danby, 2011, McAlpine and
Amundsen, 2011). But such assistance is not readily available to most doctoral
researchers, and the help which is available is often framed as remedial work (such
as foundation courses for overseas students) and removed from other forms of
research education.
Even in the United States, where there is a long tradition of English compo-
sition for all undergraduate students, there was until recently little teaching of
writing in graduate education. In 2001 Rose and McClafferty argued that there
was too little professional discussion about what supervisors could do to help their
graduate students write more effectively. They suggested that while it was com-
mon to bemoan the quality of scholarly writing both inside and outside the uni-
versity, little was done to ‘address the quality of writing in a systematic way at the
very point where scholarly style and identity is being shaped’ (Rose and McClaf-
ferty, 2001: 27). (See Chapter 9 for a discussion of the writing course developed
by Rose at UCLA.) This situation is now changing, and it is no longer a rarity
for North American higher education institutions to offer both individual and
group support for doctoral writing. There is, however, no uniform commitment
to social practice-oriented instruction in high-level writing for doctoral research-
ers. We think writing groups and workshops can be helpful and we recommend
that our doctoral researchers take advantage of any such opportunities.
Our major emphasis in this book, however, is not on the provision of writ-
ing courses. We focus on how to create pedagogic spaces within the supervisory
relationship. To conclude the chapter, we articulate our key understandings of
research writing; these underpin supervisory pedagogical work.

Key understandings of research writing

We have already foreshadowed the understandings about language and writing
that underpin our approach to doctoral writing throughout this chapter. We now
bring them together and indicate how they inform our book. In doing so, we
bring to bear our own epistemological position as post-critical researchers. We
are informed by a view of language and knowledge which is culturally bound and
imbued with power relations. We don’t see language as a neutral window on the
world, but we do understand that meanings can be commonly held. We don’t sug-
gest that there are absolute meanings. Rather, all writers have value positions.

Research is writing
Right from the time we begin to think about the research questions we are pursu-
ing, we begin to write. We record the books we have read, we take notes from
them, we keep a journal of our ideas; we have a folder full of jottings. As the
 Putting doctoral writing centre stage 11

research progresses, we write summaries and short papers that compile some of
the ideas with which we are working. We make notes to discuss with others and
write conference papers where we put our ideas into the public arena for the first
time. Researching cannot be separated from writing.

Writing is a discursive activity

Research writing is the way in which we construct knowledge. Knowledge is
always shaped by the historical circumstances and specific environment and loca-
tion in which it is produced. We think of research writing as discursive. A dis-
course is a particular formation of stories, apparent truths and practices which
constructs both knowledge and power relations. A discourse defines and produces
what we know, what and how we talk and write about an object of knowledge,
and it influences how ideas are put into practice. We live in a world where there
are many discourses, many different, overlapping, intersecting and competing sets
of stories and practices. Foucault (1991) argues that nothing has meaning outside
discourse. Socially constructed discursive formations limit, frame and form:

• What is sayable – what it is possible to speak and write about;

• What is conserved – what disappears and what is repeated and circulated;
• What is remembered – what is recognized and validated, what is regarded as
able to be dismissed;
• What is reactivated – what is transformed from foreign cultures or past epochs
and what is done with them;
• What is appropriated – which individuals and groups have access to which
discourses, the institutionalization of discourses and the struggles for control
over them.

Writing is a representation
What we write is a written approximation – it is not what actually exists or what
happened. Because words only refer to material circumstances and events, writing
cannot be a ‘reflection’ of something that is ‘out there’. Our writing does not
function as a mirror. Rather, the writer imposes her (socially constructed) view of
reality through the writing process. When we choose what to include and exclude,
what to foreground and what to critique, we are engaging in a discursive activity.
As noted, we construct meaning through language systems which are based in our
culture, place and time and through prevailing discourses, as well as through our
own particular biography.

The written representation is a text

The process of writing allows us to put our words on to a page and thus to see
them as separate from our ‘self’. They are no longer just thoughts, but available
12 Putting doctoral writing centre stage

as text, a stretch of meaningful language which we can look at critically. By asking

critical questions of the text – for example, what is included and excluded, what
is foregrounded and backgrounded – we can begin to see how our own work has
blind spots and taken-for-granted assumptions, phrases and terms. Because our
choices, experiences and positioning are inevitably in the research texts we write,
we need to interrogate them as rigorously as we can and understand that they
can be written differently. Putting ideas on to a page is an important part of that
process. We can see our own texts in the same light as any other text.

Research writing is a particular genre

Research writing consists of field notes, articles, literature work, conference
papers and the dissertation itself, all of which are particular kinds of texts, or
genres, which are constructed in particular institutional and cultural settings. PhD
writing is akin to other kinds of research writing but is shaped by the demands
of the degree, just as it is shaped by the specific demands of different disciplines.
Thus, what is created is a particular genre, which has patterns and conventions
that can be learned and interrogated. But these genres are discipline-specific texts
– the creation of which demands the formation of discipline-specific scholarly
identities.

Writing has a reader in mind

When we write an academic journal article we are writing for the community of
scholars attached to a particular publication (Thomson and Kamler, 2013). When
we write field notes, the reader we are writing for is ourselves. The difficulty for
doctoral researchers is that the ultimate thesis reader, the examiner, is largely
unknown and unpredictable. Where advisory panels exist, the examiners may be
known, but their responses to the final text may still be uncertain. Supervisors act
as the stand-in reader for most doctoral writing. It can be difficult for supervi-
sors to juggle the simultaneous reading tasks of quasi-examiner, coach, critic and
mentor.

As researchers, we are also writers

Professional writers play with language to create imaginative and compelling texts.
So can academic writers – if we work at it. We can use metaphor, allegory, trope
and other poetic tools to produce the story of our research in ways that engage
the reader (Game and Metcalfe, 1996). All research, regardless of whether it is
quantitative and experimental, ethnographic, case study or arts-based, uses writ-
ing and can create an interesting text. Some research communities have particular
scholastic conventions such as the use of the third person to narrate the story,
and some research activities seem to lend themselves to a flat lexicon that gives an
impression of facticity. But these are writing choices.
 Putting doctoral writing centre stage 13

Our writing is always in conversation with other writers

Because language is socially produced, and because research writing is a social
practice, our writing is always in conversation with other writers and their texts.
Bakhtin (1981) calls this feature of writing heteroglossia – that is, writing is always
made up of many (hetero) voices (glossia). Even if we are not specifically cit-
ing authors, the texts that we write always make intertextual connections with
other texts. Any single piece of research writing is always part of a wider scholarly
conversation.

In sum
We are arguing for a view of doctoral writing as research. We are arguing for a com-
bination of aesthetic judgments, technical virtuosity and a particular research sen-
sibility, which goes beyond thinking of writing as ‘writing up’ but as the research
act itself. And we are talking about writing practices, not just skills. Advice and
tips will not suffice as the genre we offer doctoral researchers. Research writing
involves a sophisticated set of social practices with sets of conventions and textual
characteristics which we explore in subsequent chapters.
What then is the pedagogy we need to develop to teach these practices? And
how will we differentiate the different kinds of writing that are involved in
what we call research writing? These questions form the basis of the chapters to
come. In the next chapter we introduce the remainder of our conceptual toolbox
– textwork and identitywork, and an adaptation of Fairclough’s (1989, 1992)
model to view research writing as discursive practice.
Chapter 2

Writing the doctorate,

writing the scholar

Kathryn is a doctoral researcher about to give her fourth conference paper. She
is a part-time student with twenty years of professional experience, five of which
have been as a senior manager. Despite her acknowledged expertise in her ‘day
job’, and despite having attended more conferences than she cares to remember,
she feels nervous and almost panic-stricken at the prospect of speaking in public
to an academic audience. She is four years into the PhD, has spoken at graduate
student conferences and has just completed her fieldwork. Yet she cannot avoid
the feeling of being naked and vulnerable to the negative opinions of ‘real schol-
ars’. She dreads being either patronized or attacked, and suggests to her supervi-
sor Janet, minutes before the presentation begins, that she hopes no one comes.
But they do. A sizeable audience noisily sits down, attracted by Kathryn’s topic.
Despite her qualms, Kathryn’s presentation goes smoothly. The data projector
works, she talks through and around the slides with little sign of the nerves she
continues to feel, and finishes just as the chair signals time is up. The questions
begin. The first one is easy and Kathryn responds succinctly and clearly. But then,
a man gets to his feet. It is clear he is about to make a statement, rather than ask a
question. Janet prepares to intervene, but as Kathryn begins to speak in response
to the man’s five minute exposition, she relaxes again. Kathryn skilfully defuses
the negativity, responds assertively and continues answering audience questions
for a few more minutes.
At the end of the session Janet congratulates her.

JANET: Well done. You did a great job. How do you feel about speaking at con-
ferences now?
KATHRYN: It’s terrifying. It is utterly terrifying to think that you might be found
lacking in some way – or boring . . . and the fear of being exposed. But once
the focus is on you, and you have to perform or be humiliated totally, what
does it do? It kind of clarifies the actual talking of the paper, rather than the
writing of it. The talking of it and the defending of it. If you have to defend it,
if people ask you questions, it gives you a kind of authority about your work
which perhaps you can only guess at or doubt when you are sitting alone at
your computer.
Another random document with
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for the guests from town to appear mammas and maids were busy in
the bedrooms, dressing their young ladies for the occasion.
Meanwhile the plantation musicians were assembling, two violins, a
flute, a triangle, and a tambourine. A platform had been erected at
one end of the rooms, with kitchen chairs and cuspidors, for their
accommodation. Our own negroes furnished the dance music, but
we borrowed Col. Hicky’s Washington for the tambourine. He was
more expert than any “end man” you ever saw. He kicked it and
butted it and struck it with elbow and heel, and rattled it in perfect
unison with the other instruments, making more noise, and being
himself a more inspiring sight, than all the rest of the band put
together. Col. Hicky always said it was the only thing Washington
was fit for, and he kept the worthless negro simply because he was
the image (in bronze) of Gen. Lafayette. Col. Hicky was an
octogenarian, and had seen Gen. Lafayette, so he could not have
been mistaken. When Washington flagged, a few drops of whisky
was all he needed to refresh his energies.
The whirl of the dance waxed as the night waned. The tired
paterfamiliases sat around the rooms, too true to their mission to
retire for a little snooze. They were restored to consciousness at
intervals by liberal cups of strong coffee. Black William, our first
violin, called out the figures, “Ladies to the right!” “Set to your
partners!”—and the young people whirled and swung around in the
giddy reel as though they would never have such another
opportunity to dance—as, indeed, many of them never did. From the
porch and lawn windows black faces gazed at the inspiring scene.
They never saw the like again, either.
Laughing, wide-awake girls and tired fathers and mothers started
homeward at the first blush of dawn, when they could plainly see
their way over the roads. I started too early from a party the year
before, and the buggy I was in ran over a dust-colored cow lying
asleep in the road. The nodding maid again perilously perched on
top the champagne basket, and skiffs with similar freight plied across
the broad river as soon as there was sufficient light to enable them to
dodge a passing steamboat.
 The last ball was a noble success. We danced on and on, never
thinking this was to be our last dance in the big house. Clouds were
hovering all about us the following Christmas. No one had the heart
to dance then. The negroes had already become restless and
discontented. After that the Deluge! The big house long ago slid into
the voracious Mississippi. The quarters where the wedding feast was
spread are fallen into ruins, the negroes scattered or dead. The
children, so happy and so busy then, are now old people—the only
ones left to look on this imperfectly drawn picture with any personal
interest. We lived, indeed, a life never to be lived again.
 XXXIII
A WEDDING IN WAR TIME

“Marse Green says cum right away; he’s gwine to marry Miss
Fanny to de Captain.”
“When?”
“Soon’s I kin git de preacher. I can’t wait for you; I ain’t got no
preacher yit.”
That was a summons I had one hot day in early summer, in war
times. Yankees in New Orleans; gunboats almost hourly reported
“jist ’round de p’int”; and we people distractedly hanging on the
ragged edge of alarm and anxiety, did not pause to think how
impossible it was for us to know what was happening “jist ’round de
p’int,” for all information about things beyond our physical eyesight
was questionable. In the rush of uncertain and unlooked-for events,
we could not plan any future, even one day ahead, so overwhelmed
were we in mind and estate (not to mention body) with the
strenuousness of the pitiful present.
I hastily changed my dress and was ready when my carriage was
brought to the door. “Marse Green” (I will not give the full name;
everybody in his old district knows who I mean), was a lawyer, a
politician, a man of family, while not a family man, and his little
cottage home in town was presided over, the best they knew how, by
his three daughters, the eldest of whom was scarcely out of her
teens. The disturbed state of the country had compelled me to stay
quietly as I could at my plantation home, and in the absorbing and
frequent rumor of Yankees coming, no real town news and gossip
sifted in. Thus I had not heard that Miss Fanny’s fiancé, a wounded
soldier, was at Marse Green’s.
I was driven at a rapid pace up the road and through the restless,
crowded street throngs to the home of these motherless girls, whose
New England governess had returned North. I had long been their
mother’s dearest friend, and a refuge for her daughters in all their
troubles and perplexities. We were completely cut off from any
reliable information of the doings of the world, almost at our doors.
Everybody knew New Orleans had fallen and Butler was treading the
prostrate people with hoofs of iron, and also it was only a matter of
time when his rule would reach our town only 130 miles off. As a
matter of course, under such circumstances, we were alive to any
startling rumor.
Marse Green, who did things by fits and starts, and did them very
thoroughly, too, when he started, had announced to his daughters on
the morning of my visit that they must be ready by early dawn the
following day to move themselves and everything else they might
need to his plantation on the Amite. Then the man of family shook
the dust of further assistance from his feet and proceeded to his
office for the day’s enlightenments. Of course, all business of a legal
nature was suspended. The few able-bodied men lingering outside
the rank of fighters, who were facetiously called “Druthers,” because
they’d druther not fight, or in other words, would druther stay at
home, had dropped in Marse Green’s office to while pleasantly away
their idle time. The old gentleman hobbled on his crutches to his
favorite chair and was telling his lounging visitors that gunboats
being “jist ’round de p’int,” he was sending his family out of harm’s
way, when some one casually remarked, “What you going to do with
the Captain? He can’t stay here, a paroled soldier, and he can’t go
with those young girls that way.” “By gracious!” Marse Green had not
thought of that. The Captain must marry Fanny right away, or run the
risk of being captured, for he had no place to go. In pursuance of
that sudden plan, an emissary was dispatched to summon me, and
to get the Methodist preacher. Messengers were also sent with flying
feet among the few near neighbors, asking their presence that
afternoon, while Marse Green himself rushed back home to
announce the decision to his family.
I arrived in a scene of confusion beyond words to express. Already
some kindly neighbors were there helping the distracted girls to
pack. Trunks, boxes, bags, barrels, baskets, were in every room with
piles and piles of household and personal articles to be stowed.
Everybody was busy and everybody stumbling and tearing about in
every other body’s way. Marse Green had already descended upon
them with his ultimatum, and worse became the confusion with this
new and unexpected element injected into it. Dear Fanny must be
married in white, so every one declared. Then ensued a ransacking
of trunks and drawers for a pretty white lawn she had—somewhere!
At length it was brought to light in a very crumpled condition, not
having been worn since the winter (the last Buchanan winter) Fanny
spent in Washington with her father. There was no time or
opportunity or place, apparently, to press the wrinkles out and make
the really handsome gown presentable. Then there arose a clamor
and frantic search for white stockings. Nobody had the temerity to
mention white kid gloves. They were of the past, as completely as a
thousand other necessities we had learned to do without. The black
dress was laid aside. Fanny looked very lovely in her white gown,
the most calm and composed of any of us.
The dazed, bewildered and half-sick Captain meandered around in
his dingy Confederate gray, the only suit he had. His skull had been
fractured in battle (I think at Shiloh), the hair had been shaved off
one side of his head and a silver plate covered and protected the
wound. Time was passing swifter than the motions of the little party,
fast as they were. All the packing and loading of wagons had to be
completed for the early morning start. The rest of us could stay in our
homes and run our chances—which we did, woe is me!—but Marse
Green’s girls must be off, in accordance with his dictum, and, of
course, a Confederate officer had to get out of the enemy’s reach.
Meanwhile the other invited neighbors were arriving, and also an
Episcopal minister. Mr. Crenshaw, the Methodist preacher, could not
be found. He had spent hours haranguing the few peace-loving
Jews, superannuated cripples and handful of “Druthers” remaining in
town, telling those incapables or insufficients they were not patriotic
to stand aside and let the enemy’s gunboats land at our wharf, but it
appears when the latter really were “just behind de p’int,” the voluble
gentleman’s discretion got the better of his valor, and he had
ingloriously fled.
 One kindly neighbor, a late arrival, whispered to another, who had
been there all day helping, “Any refreshments?” Not a soul had
thought of refreshments; we isolated housekeepers had not even
heard the name for so long that it had not occurred to us to talk of
furnishing what we could not procure. The late comer rushed home
and quickly returned with the half of a cornmeal pound-cake and a
pitcher of brown sugar lemonade. Then the minister required some
one to give the bride away. That was not in Marse Green’s Methodist
service, and besides Marse Green was getting mortally tired and
fractious, so, without my knowing it, Mr. McHatton volunteered to
perform that function. We guests who had been behind the scenes,
and were getting to be mortally tired and fractious, too, assembled in
the hastily-cleared parlor to witness the ceremony.
I was struck with amazement to see my husband, who had been
the busiest man there all day, march into the room with dear, pretty
Fanny on his arm! I never did know where the necessary ring came
from, but somebody produced a plain gold ring, which, no doubt, was
afterwards returned with appropriate thanks. The Captain was a
strikingly handsome man, even with a bandaged head and those ill-
fitting clothes, not even store-made, and we all agreed Fanny looked
very placid and happy. Their healths were drunk in tepid lemonade
(did you ever drink brown sugar lemonade? If your grandmother is a
Southern woman I’ll be bound she has). There was a hurried “God
bless you!” and a kiss, and I had to rush home to two wounded
brothers needing my care.
Some near neighbors stayed to assist in the further preparations
for an early flight. I afterwards heard the entire family, groom and all,
were at work all night, and at early dawn Marse Green was able to
start the loaded wagons to the piny, sandy country. The bride and
groom and two young sisters piled into the ramshackle old family
carriage, and were driven off, a ten hours’ trip to Amite. I trust they
made it before night, but it was many years thereafter before I knew
anything further of them.
I asked my husband, afterwards, when we talked the wedding
over, who paid the minister? We had not seen yet a Confederate
soldier with as much money as a wedding fee in his pocket. “I don’t
think the Captain had a dollar,” he replied, “so I whispered him to be
easy; we would attend to the minister.” No hat was passed around,
but someone produced a fifty-dollar Confederate bill—unless it was
parted with very promptly it was not worth fifty cents to the preacher.
The gunboats the frantic negroes had so long heralded, got “round
de p’int” at last, and a battle ensued in the very streets of our town.
Marse Green’s house happened to be in the thick of it, and
consequently was so riddled that it was put permanently out of
commission. The family never returned to it, even to view the ruins.
At the time of the exposition I accidentally met the Captain and his
wife on a street car in New Orleans. At Napoleon avenue the car
stopped and the passengers were leaving. I asked in a general way,
knowing no one, “Do we change cars here?” A voice, whose owner
was out of sight, promptly replied, “Yes, madam, you wait for me.” I
was thus the last passenger to descend, and to my unspeakable
amazement I was received by the Captain and Fanny! She said,
though she did not see me, she had recognized my voice, and she
reminded me that it was almost twenty-one years since we parted. It
was sweet to know that the marriage in haste had not the proverbial
sequel of repentance at leisure. They were a happy couple.
The whole wedding affair was a painful and pitiful episode, and for
years I had thought of it with a tinge of sadness; but a few years ago,
on a later visit to New Orleans, I had the happiness to meet a dear
old friend who was one of the busiest helpers on the occasion, and
we merrily laughed over the recalled incidents that at the time were
so pathetic. The handsome Captain may be living; I have since lost
track of him, but every other soul that was at that wedding has gone
where there’s no marrying or giving in marriage—I, only, am left to
chronicle this wedding in war-time.
 XXXIV
SUBSTITUTES

Mrs. Walker sent me a pan of flour! It was the first time in months
and almost the last time in years that I saw flour. These, you must
know, were war times, and flour was not the only necessary we
lacked. Dear Dr. Stone had a bluff, hearty way of arriving at things.
When the Federals were in New Orleans he was often called for a
surgical consultation, or to administer to an officer, with headache or
backache, for they were mortally afraid of yellow fever, and it was
just the season for it; and their regimental surgeons were not familiar
with the scourge. Dr. Stone frequently “made a bargain” before he
would act, and so I do not doubt in that way he obtained permission
to ship a barrel of flour—for which all of us were famishing—to Mrs.
Stone’s sister on the coast. Mrs. Walker most generously shared it
with her neighbors.
Indians had lived on cornmeal and prospered therewith. Negroes
had lived on cornmeal and prospered also. We were living on
cornmeal and not prospering, for we had been brought up on
(metaphorically speaking) nectar and ambrosia. Our cakes even,
everybody had to have cakes! were made of cornmeal and
molasses.... But I want to tell more about our Dr. Stone. When one
Northern officer sent for him to consult about amputating a leg the
doctor told him, in his blunt, positive way, he would not even
examine the wounded member until he had in his pocket a permit for
Mrs. Stone and the ladies associated with her to visit the Parish
Prison and minister to the Confederates confined there. It was the
only time any of us ever heard of a body asking the privilege of
entering that dirty old calaboose down by Congo Square.
Many such stories were wafted to us about Dr. Stone. Some may
not have been authentic, but we loved to hear and to repeat them.
However, after the war, I did hear him tell of a Union officer offering
him the present of a fine horse in recognition of some professional
obligation. “I needed that horse,” he said, “for I had none, and so I
was going my rounds a-foot, but it was branded U. S. and I returned
it.” Years after I met that Federal officer in St. Paul, and, speaking of
the doctor, whom he admired greatly, he told of the horse he had
tendered him, which was promptly returned, accompanied with a
most amusing note, ending with “So US don’t want that horse.”
Every blessed one of us was a coffee drinker, and even before the
secession of Louisiana we were weighing and measuring what
coffee we had on hand, not knowing where we could replenish our
diminishing stock. Gov. Manning, of South Carolina, and his wife
were our guests at this crisis, and Mrs. Manning showed me how to
prepare a substitute for coffee. Gracious me! that was the first, but
we had substitutes for almost every article, both to eat and to wear,
before we were whipped like naughty children and dragged back into
the Union, and made to take our nauseous medicine, labeled
“Reconstruction.” And now we are all cured! and will never be
naughty again.
That first substitute, which was followed by a score of others, was
sweet potatoes, cut, dried, toasted, ground and boiled. The
concoction did not taste so very bad, but it had no aroma, and, of
course, no exhilarating quality; it was simply a sweety, hot drink. We
had lots of Confederate money, but it quickly lost any purchasing
power it ever had. There was nothing for sale, and we could not
have bought anything even if shops had been stocked with goods
and supplies. A pin! Why to this day I always stoop to pick up a pin, I
learned so to value that insignificant necessary in the days we could
not buy a pin. A hairpin! Many women in country towns used thorns
to secure their “waterfalls.” We wore waterfalls; chignons they were
called later. I saw many of them made of silk strings, plaited or
twisted. Women had to be in the fashion, as Dr. Talmage once said,
“though the heavens fell.” If we had had anything to sew we would
have missed the usual needle supply.
I was visiting one day when one large and one small needle were
all there were in the house; if they had been made entirely of gold,
instead of “gold-eyed” only, they could not have been more
cherished. I can hear the wailing voice now, inquiring, “Where is the
needle?”
You may smile now at the idea of a substitute for a toothbrush,
but, my dear, that oft-quoted mother of invention taught us an althea
switch made a fairly good toothbrush; of course, it was both scratchy
and stiff, but we never found a better substitute for the necessary
article. As for tea, we Southerners have never been addicted to the
tea habit; however, we soon became disgusted with the various
coffee substitutes. We tried to vary our beverages with draughts of
catnip tea, that the darkies always give their babies for colic; and
orange leaf tea, that old ladies administered to induce perspiration in
cases of chills; and sassafras tea we had drunk years gone by in the
spring season to thin the blood. We did not fancy posing as babies
or ague cases—the taste of each variety was highly suggestive. I
wonder if any lady of to-day ever saw a saucer of home-made soft
soap on her washstand? After using it one had to grease (no use
saying oil, for it was generally mutton tallow) the hands to prevent
the skin cracking. I never used that soap, but traveling in out-of-the-
way roads I saw it on many a stand. Clothes, too, wore out, as is
their nature, and the kind we were used to wearing were not of the
lasting variety like osnaburgs and linseys.
Quite early in the war Cuthbert Slocomb and De Choiseul stopped
over a night with us on their way to the front. With them was another
young man whose name escapes me now, who was suffering from
chills, so he remained a few days as our guest. We dosed him with
orange-leaf tea, which was about the best we could do, having no
quinine on hand. In his kit he had a lot of chamois skins, which he
laid out before me with the modest request I make a pair of
pantaloons out of them. We talked the project over and decided
overalls were the only thing in that line that could be made of
chamois skins, that, of course, had to be pieced lengthways,
crossways and sideways. The result was satisfactory, and the young
man proudly carried off his overalls. I hoped, but did not expect, that
he would escape a rain or two on his expedition clad in chamois
skins! However, I was amply repaid for my ingenuity and skill, for I
had scraps enough of the skins left me to supply tobacco pouches
and gloves to lots of soldier friends thereafter.
At one time, in dire need, I paid one dollar a yard for thin coarse
muslin, white with black dots, which looked distressingly bad after a
wetting or two, but my crowning extravagance was paying thirty
dollars a yard for common blue denim; that was in Houston. Thus
went the last of my Confederate money. After that for a while we did
without things.
Mr. James Phelps of New Orleans—scores of us must remember
genial Jim Phelps—made a call on me in Texas, introducing himself
with the whimsical remark that I must look at him from shoulder up
and not down, for he had on a brand new paper collar, and had
borrowed the use of a razor, and was now out making ceremonious
calls! Oh, dear me! we lived through all of these privations, and the
few remaining survivors are not afflicted with nervous prostration, or
any of the fashionable ills of the day. Their nerves were
strengthened, their spirits brightened. They bravely bore the fires of
trouble and privation that make them placidly content with the
comforts and solaces of their declining years.
 XXXV
AN UNRECORDED BIT OF NEW ORLEANS
HISTORY

Since there are still living descendants of the persons concerned

in this incident, I have omitted names. The story is entirely true and
well known to many old residents of New Orleans.
More than sixty-five years ago, a man I shall not name, was tried
and convicted of fraud against the State Land office. He was in the
prime of life, educated, a West Point graduate, of good parentage,
splendid physique, gracious though a trifle pompous and self-
asserting in manner and of presumed wealth. Of course, his case,
when it came to trial, was bravely contested inch by inch. Rich
relatives, influential friends, and the best legal talent were enlisted,
but it was too plain a case of fraud. So, after tedious trial, conviction
and sentence to the Penitentiary at Baton Rouge resulted. There
were the usual delays, a stay of sentence, a wrangle as to final
commitment, a question of length of sentence. His sureties were
caught in the net, and tremendous efforts they made to dodge
liability for the amount of the bond. Two of the sureties did escape,
but the third made good. In steamboat parlance, he “went to the
clerk’s office and settled.”
 The Calaboose.

Meanwhile the convicted man—he was called “Colonel,” not by

courtesy only, for, unlike most Southern Colonels of that date, he had
had military training and might have been even more if he had
waited till Generals were in dire demand in Dixie—the Colonel was
behind bars in the Parish Prison. The horrid old calaboose down by
Congo Square, where more than one Confederate languished two
decades later, when the prison was twenty years older and forty
years dirtier. The Colonel’s devoted wife, who had worn out the
energies of a dozen wives, and was still alert and active in behalf of
her unfortunate mate, never relaxed her vigilance. When the coils of
the law wrapped tighter and tighter around the doomed man, she
rose to every emergency. No personal appeals, nothing her fertile
mind had suggested, had availed to stay the process of the law. Now
that worse had come to the worst, and the Colonel was under lock
and key, awaiting the final decision as to length of sentence, Madam
and the Colonel’s oldest daughter (her step-daughter, by the way)
went daily to the calaboose to visit the prisoner. Their visits were
made always in the afternoon. The two cloaked and heavily veiled
ladies remained till the closing of the gates.
 It was in the fall of the year, and election times, when politics were
rife. Madam was not only bright and intelligent, but endowed with
remarkable tact, and brim full of schemes and resources. At every
visit she stopped at the gate and had converse with the warden or
turnkey, or whoever was on duty, and related to him the latest news
and political gossip and bantered him on his political bias, no matter
what that bias was. This course she pursued daily and vigorously.
The daughter, still in her teens, was a mere figurehead, always
heavily veiled and enveloped in a voluminous long coat. With the
slightest nod of recognition to “the powers that be,” she proceeded
rapidly to her father’s cell, leaving her mother, so bursting with talk
and information that she could neither enter nor depart without first
unburdening herself of the latest political news.
One evening, when matters at court were nearing the crisis, the
two ladies rushed into prison, almost breathless, they had hurried so!
They had had all sorts of detentions. They realized they were late,
and would only have a minute, but they could not let the day pass
without the customary visit to the Colonel, etc., etc. While madam
was endeavoring to explain to the warden the cause of the delay,
and tell also some anecdote anent the election which was too good
to keep, the quiet young girl proceeded at once to the cell of her
father. The turnkey came in sight, significantly rattling his keys, which
roused madam to the consciousness that she had not been in to kiss
the Colonel good-night, after all. She had been so interested in Mr.
Warden, he was so entertaining, and had such queer views and
opinions of the candidates, etc., etc. So, to the Colonel she rushed,
returning immediately to the gate, where her friend was impatiently
waiting to lock up, signal to do so having been given. The dim lamps
about Congo Square had been lighted and a darkening November
day was fast closing around them. “Lavinia, come, the jailor is
waiting to lock up.” “Yes, ma,” was the reply from the cell. A moment
later: “Lavinia, it is getting too dark for us to be out; come at once.”
“Yes, ma, I’m coming right now.” “That girl can’t bear to leave her
father.” As the madam said this, out rushed Lavinia. Her mother
caught her arm and both parties darted through the closing gate,
with a wave from madam’s hand and a “Good-bye, we will be early
to-morrow and never keep you waiting again.”
 The lock-up took his rounds at the usual time to close the cells for
the night. The Colonel seemed to be quietly sleeping in his narrow
cot, trousers and stockings carelessly thrown upon the chair. The
door was securely fastened by the officer.
Next morning, when it was opened, a gruff voice called to the
sleeper, who seemed to be stupidly half awake. Miss Lavinia rose
from the bed, showing her face to the attendant for the first time in all
these weeks. The Colonel, disguised in his daughter’s cloak and veil,
had flown!
There were no telegraphs, or wireless, nothing, in fact, but nimble
legs and more nimble horses to facilitate the frantic search. The bird
had flown afar.
Long before the cage door was opened the prisoner was beyond
the reach of the long arm of the law. Madam had for weeks been
skillfully planning escape, how skillfully, the result proved. She had
engaged the services of the captain of a fruit schooner to take a lady
passenger on his next trip to Havana. To insure results, she had
privately conveyed provisions and necessary articles for the
passenger’s comfort to the vessel, bribed the captain to secrecy, and
it was planned he would give her timely notice when the tides and
winds were favorable to raise sail, and put rapidly and silently to sea
from Lake Pontchartrain.
He fulfilled his promises so to do.
When the two (supposed) women rushed into the hack awaiting
them round the corner from the jail, the driver whipped up his horses
and trotted rather faster than usual down the old shell road he had
conveyed these ladies more times than he could remember, right
from that old corner to the schooner landing.
Years after these events had ceased to be talked of, or even
remembered, and the ladies who bore the colonel’s name had
vanished from Louisiana, from the deck of an incoming steamer in
the harbor of Havana my husband was frantically hailed by a stout
old gentleman standing in a lighter. The gray-haired man, who did
not dare venture into an American vessel, recognized my husband,
whom he had slightly known in the days of his prosperity. He was
now an exile, a runner for a Cuban hotel. How eagerly and gladly he
took possession of us and our belongings; how he piloted us through
the narrow streets; how he domiciled us in the best rooms, and how
assiduous he was in attention to our comfort, I cannot tell.
A few years thereafter the poor old man, who had one daughter
with him to solace his declining years, passed sadly away, and I was
summoned from my plantation home to the stricken girl. She tearfully
told me the story of his flight, which had never been revealed before,
and, together, we turned the leaves of the worn and faded diary he
had kept during that exciting voyage to the Spanish Dominion, where
there was no extradition treaty to compel his deliverance to his
country. In the early days, when there were no telegraphs, no cables,
he managed to support his wife and daughters in New York by acting
as commercial correspondent for several newspapers, both in New
York and New Orleans, and Charleston also, I think; but that
business died out, and he gradually became too infirm for any active
or sustained occupation.
His death was a blessed release.
 XXXVI
CUBAN DAYS IN WAR TIMES

Not a Confederate who was stranded in Havana in the ’60’s but

can recall with grateful feelings the only hotel there kept by an
American woman and kept on American lines. Every Confederate
drifted under that roof-tree. If he possessed the wherewithal he paid
a round sum for the privilege. If he was out of pocket, and I could
name a score who were not only penniless but baggageless, he was
quite welcome, well cared for and in several instances clothed!
Some, notwithstanding her “positive orders,” exposed themselves to
night air, when mosquitoes were most in evidence, and came in with
headache and yellow fever. They were cared for and nursed back to
health. No one knew better than Mrs. Brewer how to manage such
cases. I could call the roll of the guests who came—and went, some
to Canada, some to Mexico: Gen. and Mrs. Toombs of Georgia, Gen.
Magruder, Gen. Fry and his beautiful wife, who was a Micou of
Alabama; Commodore Moffitt and Ex-Gov. Moore of Louisiana;
Major Bloomfield and his wife—some of us still remember
Bloomfield. He had for years a blank-book and stationery shop in
New Orleans. I have one of his books now, a leather-bound ledger.
He was in service on somebody’s staff. There were some not of the
army, but on business bent, blockade running and so on.
My gracious! I can’t begin to tell of the crowd that promenaded the
galleries and azotea of Hotel Cubano toward the end of the war.
They all talked and talked fight, the ex-army men declaring they
would not return to their homes with sheathed swords. Alas! They
did, though. Before their talks came to an end the Confederacy did.
J. P. Benjamin arrived on a sailboat with Gen. Breckinridge. They
were wise as owls and had nothing to say. I remember the news
came of the assassination of President Lincoln while a large party of
the braves were dining at our house—on the cerro of Havana. Some
of them were jubilant, but a quiet word from Gen. Breckinridge:
“Gentlemen, the South has lost its best friend,” and a quieter word
from Mr. Benjamin: “We will let the painful subject drop,” acted as a
quietus for our boisterous guests....
But I must not wander from our hostess of Hotel Cubano. A
strange mixture was she of parsimony and prodigality, vindictiveness
and gratitude, a grand woman withal, capable of doing heroic things.
She knew intimately and had entertained the family of Pierre Soulé,
who tarried at the Cubano en route to Spain, when Soulé was
minister. The Slidells also were her friends, Jeff Davis’ family and
scores of other prominent people. She made the first donation of
$500 to the Jefferson Davis Monument Association. With vigorous,
watchful management she accumulated a large fortune in Havana,
though she maintained a host of parasites, poor relatives from the
States. She had four girls at one time belonging to her kindred who
were too poor to educate them. But her business methods were too
queer and unconventional for words. She had leased the large hotel
long before the war in the United States, for what was, even in those
dull days in Havana, considered a low sum, for the chance of making
it pay was a trifle against her. She kept it American style—had batter
cakes and mince pies—so that, though her prices were, as we say
now, “the limit,” every refugee and newspaper correspondent who
was sick of garlic and crude oil diet, felt he had to live at the
American hotel. Havana was then the refuge of defaulters and others
of lax business methods, there being no extradition treaty between
the United States and Spain.
In Cuba when you rent a house, you pay by the month, and so
long as you meet the payments, you cannot be dispossessed. (I do
not know what the law may be now; I write of forty years ago.) Not
long after Mrs. Brewer’s venture proved a success, the owner tried
every possible way to make her throw up the lease. Anyone knowing
Mrs. Brewer as I did, could well understand there was no coercing
her. She maintained her rights, paying rent with utmost promptness,
and when paper currency made its unwelcome advent and was
legally declared of equal value with gold, the payments were made in
paper. That currency depreciated steadily and so greatly, too, that
Mrs. Brewer told me the rent of her basement to the German
consulate for storage purposes, which rent she exacted in gold, was,
when exchanged for paper currency, sufficient to pay the rent of her
entire building. When I remonstrated with her as being unjust, she
explained that all the years she had occupied the building the owner
refused to make necessary repairs and alterations. She had been
compelled to put in modern plumbing, repairs, painting—in fact,
everything—at her own expense, and now she was simply
reimbursing herself. When she amassed a fortune, tired of the life,
she threw up the lease, returned to the United States and a few
years ago died at an advanced age. Her previous history is like a
“story told by night.”
She was the wife of a United States army officer, stationed at
Charleston, who eloped with his wife’s seamstress. She did not know
nor did she take steps to inform herself, where they fled. He had
cashed his bank account and gone. In her shameful abandonment
she took passage on the first vessel leaving port for foreign lands.
She arrived, a young, deserted wife, in Havana, years before I knew
her, homeless and friendless, and was removed from the schooner
on which she made the voyage from Charleston ill of yellow fever.
When she was ready to leave the hospital, it was found not only the
small amount of money in her purse, but her jewelry as well, was
barely sufficient to pay her expenses. When she recovered, she
speedily found work in Havana, sewing in the house of a Spanish
marquesa, who became deeply interested in the case of the forlorn
woman, eventually assisting her in getting an independent start at
keeping a boarding house for foreigners in the city who chafed at
Cuban cooking.
A proposition had been made to Mrs. Brewer by two or three
American refugees to keep house for them, they to furnish
everything, but the generous marquesa vetoed the plan and offered
to finance a better scheme. So Mrs. Brewer rented and furnished a
small house, and the men came to her as boarders, thereby placing
herself in a more independent position. From that small beginning
sprung the largest, best equipped and most expensive—for her
charges were exorbitant—hostelry in the island. Meanwhile the
kindly marquesa went her way gaily in the fashionable wealthy
society of Havana, Mrs. Brewer working and managing, toiling and
accumulating in her own domain. They rarely met.
When my family went to Cuba it was to escape from war troubles
at home. We sought for rest and peace, but it was not long before
we felt we may have “jumped from the frying pan into the fire.”
Rebellion soon became rife on the island. We, being neutrals, had
occasional visits from both parties of the guerilla type. The captains-
general sent at frequent intervals from the mother country ruled with
severity.
One morning while I was visiting Mrs. Brewer, the marquesa
called, in a terrible state of mind. Her young son, an only child, had
been arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to be executed as a rebel
sympathizer. She declared to Mrs. Brewer that she and her friends
were powerless to do anything in the case, and she implored Mrs.
Brewer’s assistance. It was grand to see how the American woman
responded. “Go to your home, possess your soul in peace, if you
can. I will intercede with the Captain-general.” She did, too. As I
remember, Mr. Henry Hall was the American consul. A messenger
was sent with flying feet to summon him. By the time she had
dressed herself in her finest finery and decked her person with all the
jewels she could muster and had her carriage and liveried coachman
ready, Mr. Hall had put on his official dress, both knowing how
important it was to create an impression on the wily Spaniard. They
looked as if they might be more than count and countess, marquis
and marquesa themselves.
Arriving at the palace, our consul obtained immediate access to
the potentate. Mrs. Brewer was introduced with a flourish, and she at
once proceeded to tell her story. She told of the extreme youth of the
prisoner, too immature to be a volunteer on either side, too
inexperienced to have any opinion, and so on, imploring him to spare
the life of “an only son, and his mother a widow.” The stern old man
only shook his head and repeated that his orders were absolute and
unchangeable. Mrs. Brewer fell upon her knees before him,
declaring she would not rise until he at least commuted the sentence
to banishment to Spain. She told him her own story; how she, a