Two Widows

In her small Washington home fortnight ago Mrs. Belle Case La Follette had to put aside the biography she was writing of her late great husband, Senator Robert Marion La Follette, because of acute abdominal pains. Aged 72, fine-faced, clearheaded, she was taken to Georgetown University Hospital where surgeons ordered an emergency operation for a serious intestinal obstruction. By plane and train from Wisconsin to Washington sped her devoted sons Senator Robert Marion and Governor Philip Fox La Follette. They arrived just in time to get a flickering smile of loving recognition from their mother before she slipped quietly away from them forever. Too late was her daughter Fola, wife of Dramatist George Middleton, hurrying east from Santa Monica. Of all the tributes evoked by the death of Widow La Follette none was more appreciated by her family than the one (not made public) from the outstanding Liberal of the U. S. Supreme Court. Mr. Justice Brandeis who signed himself "Uncle Louis." Mrs. La Follette's body was carried back to Madison, placed as close beside her husband's as she always was in life.

On the campus of the University of Wisconsin in 1879 where they met, loved, became engaged, sensible Belle Case induced Robert La Follette to drop his notion of becoming a Shakespearean actor, turned his career definitely to Law & Politics. They were married in 1881. She became a politician's ideal wife. Into her husband's campaigns she threw herself with all the force of her able intellect. She kept up his faith in himself and his cause through defeat and discouragement. She was, she boasted, more radical than he. As they aged, they even came to look alike. As his silent partner she exercised great influence over Wisconsin politics and he affectionately referred to her as "the counselor," fondly recalled "when we were Governor." She stumped for him during his Presidential canvass of 1924, made many a vote with her sound political sense. Stateswoman though she was, she would never accept public office. When Senator La Follette died in 1925, she refused. Progressive pleadings to take his seat at the Capitol, designated "Young Bob" as his father's successor, continued to serve as an adviser of quiet wisdom.

Robert Marion La Follette founded a Progressive dynasty in Wisconsin. Belle Case La Follette became the matriarch of Wisconsin politics.

To another famed widow of a famed husband Death came last week. Elizabeth Genevieve McEvoy ("Bessie McCoy") Davis expired in a Bayonne, France, hospital after an emergency operation. In 1912, aged 24, Bessie McCoy married Richard Harding Davis, swashbuckling war correspondent for the New York Tribune, playwright (The Dictator, Miss Civilization], author (Soldiers of Fortune, The White Mice). Witnesses: Actress Ethel Barrymore, Author Gouverneur Morris.

Wedding celebration: a Coney Island party for 500 mothers and children out of New York's slums.

Bessie McCoy won stage fame as the Yama-Yama Girl in The Three Twins in 1908. Her big song:

Maybe he's hiding behind the chair, Ready to spring out at you, unaware; You'd better run to your Mamma, For here comes the Yama, The Yama man.

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