D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • F A L L 2 0 2 1
50
MARY MACL ANE, BU T TE'S PRODIGAL DAU GHTER MARY MACL ANE, BU T TE'S PRODIGAL DAU GHTER
the the
AWAIT WAIT
D
EVIL'S EVIL'S
COMING OMING
CHICAGO PUBLISHER HERBERT S. STONE & CO. RELEASED
I AWAIT THE DEVIL'S COMING IN 1902, MARY MACLANE'S
FIRST MEMOIR, WRITTEN WHEN SHE WAS 19. Although it
was issued under the much less provocative title The Story
of Mary MacLane, the content was so sensational, so inti-
mate, so blunt and unapologetic, that people couldn't help
but have strong opinions, especially the people of Butte,
whose scorn for MacLane's scandalous and unladylike be-
havior—which included her open bisexuality and frequent
appeals to the Devil for deliverance from her monotonous,
lonely existence—nearly equaled her own contempt for the
former's petit bourgeois mentality.
"Butte and its immediate vicinity present as ugly an
outlook as one could wish to see. It is so ugly indeed that it
is near the perfection of ugliness. And anything perfect, or
nearly so, is not to be despised." As a teenager in Butte at
I
by LINDSAY DICK
