Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte

With her fortune regained, MacLane traveled east in the summer. Her first stop was Chicago, where she stayed for a time with Lucy and Harriet Monroe, proposing marriage to the latter sister. “Will you marry me? We will go to Butte and live on liver and bacon.” Monroe, in turn, expressed awe to the press: “She is the most powerful personality I ever saw. I never saw such a person with such analytical power as she possesses. Already she knows me better than I know myself.” Next stop, Buffalo, where her travels were reported like the procession of a saint — “Beautiful young Genius from Butte will pass through this Town Today” — and then on to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to see Fannie Corbin, whose address reporters doxed. Crowds formed outside of the English teacher’s house day and night. The police were occasionally called in to disperse the masses eager for a glimpse of MacLane and her anemone lady. During this period, the novelist and playwright Zona Gale gained the first authorized, in- ... Read full article.