The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red by Ellen Rimbauer

snores as I long for home, and most of
    all my dear mother. Her guidance. Her advice. Oh, the ache in
    my heart this loss causes me. The terror with which I face another
    day here, for I know it is but one of many that will combine to
    make up this year of travel.
    There is talk of a European war. John believes the need for
    petroleum will increase dramatically, and with it our fortunes.
    But what good is fortune without love? And if John loves me,
    what strange ways he chooses to display it. Is love at the heart of
    our sweaty embrace? I once felt this—it seems like months ago
    now. But since our arrival here at the islands, it is bestiality that
    my husband brings to bed, not love. He takes me, he does not
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    make love to me. It is carnal and awful, and I give myself to him
    only reluctantly and with great displeasure for fear of suffering
    badly should I do otherwise.
    I know not what I’ve gotten myself into.
    And all I want is out.
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    19 april 1908—kenya, africa
    Africa. The dark continent. A man’s place. Primitive and
    intriguing. The birthplace of mankind, they say. Eden, they say.
    Skin so black it’s blue. Wild animals in numbers that stagger the
    imagination. Oh, to have a motion picture camera record this!
    John and I, and three other couples, two from Britain, one
    from Cleveland (ironically he and John share some business
    acquaintances there), are escorted into the bush by nearly thirty
    natives, an Australian guide named Charles Hammer and a Negro
    gun-bearer named Hipshoo—at least that’s how we all pronounce
    it. About ten of the thirty are women, two of whom are assigned
    to me, one named Sukeena, the other Marishpa. They tend to me
    like court-appointed maids, at my side the moment I need them.
    Bright-eyed and ?lled with laughter, they have greatly elevated my
    spirits, which had been lagging these past several weeks. Christmas
    away from home was most trying, and though John endeavored to
    explain to me that I had a new home now, it only made matters
    worse.
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    That home is, of course, the grand house, and what pieces of
    information we’ve obtained while away are encouraging indeed.
    The walls are up, the roof going on. It is said to have thirty windows
    on the front of the house alone. The glass is being ordered
    for them now. I have continued to collect, starting in the Paci?c
    Islands with lovely wood carvings, some coral and one enormous
    ?sh that John had taxidermied. Its species escapes me, though
    indirectly he’s told me a dozen times as he loves telling this ?shing
    story at nearly every dinner table we enjoy. I believe John
    caught some two hundred ?sh during the course of our stay, and
    with only this one to remember it by, he stretches the story a little
    longer (the ?sh too!) each time he tells it.
    But John started me thinking about the house, and now I ?nd
    I am hard pressed to do otherwise. Planning for its decoration
    and its completion consumes me. I bought a hundred yards of
    silk for wall covering while in Siam; beige, and exquisitely woven.
    Another hundred yards of a similar linen, also for wall covering.
    (We skipped India because of the anticolonial uprisings there.)
    John keeps encouraging me to “buy, buy, buy,” emphasizing the
    enormity of our future home. To my great relief, the home itself
    has drawn us close together again. We talk of it constantly, consulting
    the plans, he inviting my opinion. I can actually see it
    growing as we discuss it, as strange as that may sound. These
    “visions” of mine seem a preternatural connection to the house
    itself, effortlessly reaching across the thousands of miles of
    ocean—a radio of the mind. (Radio has not yet reached Seattle,
    but it was all the talk before we left.) I have kept the existence of
    these “visions” to myself—John has no mind for any of it—while
    all the time actually “seeing” the house grow behind the work of
    the hundreds of men now on-site.
    A most remarkable thing happened two