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
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cal ones. But as a
woman who fear-
lessly expressed all
her emotions and
desires, her posthu-
mous importance to
the feminist move-
ment is undeniable.
I, MARY MACLANE
After several years writing for large newspapers, living
with Caroline Branson, the former lover of writer Maria Lou-
ise Poole, and releasing a flop of a second novel, My Friend
Annabel Lee, MacLane was hustled back by her stepfather
to Butte in 1909 after falling into financial ruin. She came
down with scarlet fever, which left her in fragile health. In
1912, she started writing her second memoir, I, Mary Ma-
cLane. It is a more measured and ruminative work, although
the incandescent fury that characterizes I Await the Devil's
Coming still shows itself on occasion.
From her family's house on North Excelsior Street,
MacLane could
see the Ansel-
mo headframe
and watch the
miners change
shifts. In I, Mary
MacLane, she
explains her re-
lationship with
language in a
way that recalls both the synesthesia of the poetic mind and
the laborious process of mining. She notes, "I see two words
which may be the only proper ones out of ten thousand to
bear my thought," much like Butte miners picked through
layers of bedrock for copper veins. She discusses how she
orders words by tiers, making choices based on her audi-
ence and the desired effect. As twentieth-century critic H. L.
Mencken noted, MacLane is keenly aware of the explosive
power of words: "I use discretion. I know that tier of words
to be of the nature of bombs, of strychnine, of a dynamic
force resistible against all human and worldly substance."
Mary MacLane's residence
on Excelsior Street in Butte.
LINDSAY
DICK
