Eddie Doherty - Tumbleweed: A Biography of Catherine Doherty

Tumbleweed

A Biography

EDDIE DOHERTY

Madonna House Publications
Combermere, Ontario, Canada

Madonna House Publications

2888 Dafoe Rd. RR2

Combermere, ON K0J 1L0

Canada

www.madonnahouse.org

Tumbleweed: A Biography

Eddie Doherty

2011 Madonna House Publications. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without written permission of Madonna House Publications.

First Ebook: April 2015

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-897145-76-0

Originally published by

Bruce Publishing Company

Milwaukee, WI, 1948

New Edition:

Madonna House Publications, 1989

Cover: Ed C. Hunt from original publication

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Doherty, Eddie, 1890-1975

Tumbleweed

New Canadian ed.

ISBN 0-921440-12-X

1. Doherty, Catherine de Hueck, 1896-1985.

2. Catholics Biography. I. Title.

BX4705.D64D64 1989 282.0924 C89-090035-3

This is the book of Catherine.
Of her, the Rev. Paul H. Furfey once said,
She is Gods own Tumbleweed, blowing through the world,
wherever the breath of the Holy Ghost may send her.
To her, the book is affectionately dedicated.

SEX, said the baroness in a loud and plangent voice, is the chalice of the sacrament of matrimony.

Mr. Dee, slouched over a magazine in the back room of the library, straightened up and listened.

Without sex there is no sacrament, there is no marriage. Sex is beautiful. God made it for us to enjoy. It is holy. Of course, like all holy things, it can be, and is, profaned. You profane it when you say it is dirty, or when you think it evil.

Mr. Dee could not see the woman to whom the baroness was talking. He wasnt interested in her; and he had a knack of not seeing anything except that which interested him. But he felt something like pity for her. She had deliberately placed herself in the path of a verbal avalanche, but without realizing her danger. Now let her try to catch her breath if she could, before she was buried in the blonde Russians word-fall!

It was the baroness who absorbed Mr. Dees attention. Another woman saying such things, he felt, would have lowered her voice, might have spoken in a whisper to make sure she was not overheard by anyone except the visitor. Apparently the Russian didnt care who heard her. If her audience were embarrassed, that was too bad; but sometimes one remembers a lesson only because of the smart it engendered.

And, if others listened, they could learn something too. Maybe they needed the lecture as well as the woman who had evoked it.

Then too, it was usually necessary for the baroness to raise her voice. Streetcars were forever rattling by in 135th Street. Boys and girls were screaming at some game that kept them running through the traffic. Taxis and trucks and pleasure cars kept honking in alarm and anger. A child with the instincts of a hotcha drummer spent hours beating the side of a garbage can set precariously on the edge of the curb. Women called shrilly from windows across the way. Drunks sang in hideous disharmony outside the blue door. And there was always the barking of some dog, or the cry of some peddler sitting on a horse-drawn cart or wagon, to compete with the speaker for attention.

Mr. Dee could hear perfectly.

Why do you think there are so many divorces in this country? One out of three! Divorces. Abortions. Prostitution everywhere. Its because people think that sex is dirty. Jokes against marriage in the newspapers, in the magazines, in best-selling books, and hour after filthy hour on the radio until your heart smokes with fury! I can understand that about pagans. But we are supposed to be a Christian people. We are supposed to know that sex is clean, natural, a glorious gift of God.

Mr. Dee had never seen the baroness angry before. She seemed to live in a restrained joyousnessin a happiness so intense it frequently bubbled out of her wide mouth in peals of laughter, or shone out of her eyes in a burst of bright blue glory.

An extremely passionate woman, he decided. An emotional woman, but sane and logical even in anger. He studied the lines in her face. She had suffered much, evidently. Her wisdom sprang out of her life, not out of the books she had read nor the teachers to whom she had listened. She spoke with an authority that only a harrowing existence could have conferred.

To say it is a duty you owe your husband, or a task imposed on women for the creation of childrenand nothing elseis blasphemy. Sheer blasphemy. Im so sick of hearing about cold women, prudish women, women who think God blushes every time they strip themselves for the bath. The fools! These are the women who have brought more misery to the world than all your prostitutes. Dont try to tell me about them. Ive talked to hundreds of them in the hospital. I talk to them every day, here in Friendship House.

A woman who thinks that sex is dirty makes her life a stinking hell. She profanes a sacrament. She drives her husband into adultery, or worse. She brings up dirty-minded, cold, fearful little boys and girls. She makes Gods idea of marriage a trick of the devil. I have no patience with her. I cannot forgive her ignorance. She should know better.

In Poland, on the wedding night, bride and bridegroom get down on their knees, after their first union, and sing a Te Deum , a psalm of thanks to almighty God for the beautiful gift with which He has blessed them. Now go back to your husband, and tell him youve been a fool. Start another honeymoon and make it last. It is your right, your sacred privilege. It should be a great and holy joy.

Mr. Dee didnt see the prudish wife leave. He was wrapped in his own moody thoughts, and in a sort of wonder at this Russian baroness. What had brought her here to Harlem? What had introduced her to live with the Negroes, in a Negro neighborhood, in the poverty of the Negroes, and in the love of the Negroes? What had inspired her to give her life to them?

There was a story in this woman, Catherine. And he had only an inkling of it. She had been a noblewoman in Russia.

She had been a Red Cross nurse in the Russian army during World War I. She had been rich. Very rich. She had fled her native land during the Bolshevik revolution. She had lived in Canada. She had lectured all over Canada and the United States. She had worked at menial tasks. She had made a lot of money in New Yorkand had given up everything she had, to live in poverty and help the poor.

The Baroness Catherine de Hueck was beautiful with an old-world beauty. High cheek bones. A wide high forehead. The biggest head and the stubbornest chin Mr. Dee had ever seen on a woman. Her hair was braided and arranged in a coronet. It was three shades of shining gold. She wore blue earrings, which made her eyes seem even bluer than they were. She used lipstick and rouge. Her fingers were ink-stained, and there was a dab of ink on the bare elbow that stuck out of the hole in her blue sweater. She wore a rough brown-checked skirt that looked as old as the sweater, torn cotton stockings, and disconsolate-looking shoes. Her clothes might have come out of a rag bag, but she wore them with distinction.

She was big, but she was graceful. She was plump, but full of energy. She was dominant, and humble. She was poised and calm nowafter her impromptu lectureyet ready to attack again if need be. She never pulled a punch.