Young Woman Whose Life Ebbed as She Wrote “Thirteen Cigarettes” Left Empty Purse. Funeral Plans Pending
“Look down – look down that lonely road, the hacks all dead in line: Some give a nickel, some give a dime, to bury dis po’ body o’ mine!”
All ready for the dismal ritual of burial lies the body of the author of those lines – ready for the trip down the lonely road.
And the money – it must come from some place other than the pitifully empty purse that was found in the little attic room at 1625 K street beside the body of the author yesterday morning.
All that is mortal of Miss Draper Gill, romantic booklover, who finally found that in poverty the body shackles the mind to the humdrum of this world, and who broke the shackles with an open gas jet, lies in the Tabler Funeral Home, 828 M street, while friends and relatives busy themselves with the arrangements for her funeral. The arrangements have not been completed.
Lines Written as Life Ebbs.
Miss Gill, whose closest friends were the fanciful figures from between the leaves of books, wrote the above lines as the close of her life, as her final efforts to slash the shackles of poverty that took her too often from her friends of the phantom book world into the every day pursuits of livelihood.
With her was found her story, eloquent in its pathos, telling a tale of “Thirteen Cigarettes,” the “coffin nails” with which she sealed the lid upon the shackling body and with which she hoped to free her intangible self to stay always with her fanciful friends of fiction.
Even as she died in the shabby little room some time yesterday morning, she moved with her fiction friends, this last time as a fictional character of her own creation, as “Carol,” a girl like herself, strangely, though, even in the tale, coming every now and then into the world of real men and women and leaving the fancy world behind.
Left Only Few Pennies
The story she ended with the two lines above, she wrote as gas filled her room and as, all unmindful of the danger to her plans her smoking might constitute, she inhaled puff after puff from the fatal number of cigarettes. As she took the last puff from the last cigarette she laid her story aside, and lay down quietly to await the final shattering of her shackles to this world.
She left only a few pennies, and there is none coming to her from her last place of employment, the book shop of the Woodward & Lothrop department store, for she had on Saturday, the last day she worked, drawn in advance the little pay she had coming to her.
Story of Thirteen Cigarettes
Eloquently, the story of “Carol” and the “Thirteen Cigarettes” tells of the death of all that was mortal of Draper Gill. It follows:
“October 21, 1930
“Thirteen cigarettes.
“The bare attic room bore signs of former occupancy, but none of them sufficiently interesting to fire any one’s imagination. Discolored, once-white walls, the plaster chipped and cracked, and a few nail holes were about all. Situated on the fourth and top floor and partitioned off rom the unfinished attic proper, the room had probably been occupied by careless servants.
“Carol lay prone on a cot in this same room, ostensibly reading, but stopping at intervals to rehearse what had become a very futile philosophy of life – her life.
Termed Coffin Nails
“Just the other day she had read a story entitled ‘Something Will Happen,’ but nothing had in the story. Carol had been more fortunate in the past, and the evil spells of desirable circumstances have always been broken sooner or later. Now it was different. She was 26 and, voluntarily or involuntarily, she herself had closed all avenues of escape. The 13 cigarettes indeed represented the oft-bruited coffin nails. When they were gone and when the ash tray held the thirteenth stub and contributing ashes, Carol’s doom would have been knelled, silently but significantly.”Reviewing events, recent and long past, was not very comforting. Always she had made wrong moves and suffered from the unexpected results. A childish spontaneity had been half smothered during adolescence and thoughtless selfishness coupled with an indefinable weakness of purpose were growing up in its place. Carol recognized the change dolefully and helplessly, and so did very little to remedy it.
“Hovering on the brink of poverty soon loses all semblance of the picturesque and grows very irksome indeed, particularly when expensive tastes and a flair for spending complicates matters. Carol, –at the moment had a few coppers in her purse and nothing really to look forward to except the impossible settlement of large and small debts. That financial status might have ‘roused the fighting blood’ of a huskier vitality, but served only to overwhelm poor Carol quite completely.
Humdrum Routine
“If one demands the pleasantly unexpected of life, and likes the knack of arranging for joyous events, only to find a series of whirlpools circling rapidly from the crest to the depths, it is disappointing, to say the least, and even trifling pleasures can be obtained only through persistent loyalty in the execution of humdrum routine duties, nine-to-six sort of existence, it rouses a perverse in nature, such as Carol’s, and a black mood of rebellion conspires to blind utterly even the instinct of self-preservation.
“Inspiration was necessary to Carol, as much so as the contant goading indispensable in getting beasts of burden to their destinations. She learned to con it from many sources, books and strangers and abstract beauty. The supply gone, she was like a mechanical toy with no one to wind it – powerless.
” ‘Lazy–I fear I’m incurably lazy -quite worthless in fact,’ she mused. It was too bad, for people really expected great things of her, until she, too, was sometimes convinced, but nothing came of it -only this sorry end, that approached as each tobacco-filled cylinder dwindled into gray ash and blackened stub.
“She had done reasoning out of the possible effects of heredity, environment, individuality and incalculable circumstance – they were so hopelessly tangled in a knotted mesh, an eminent psychologist might well hesitate to unravel the skeins.
” ‘Too much purple and yellow in the color scheme,’ was Carol’s whimsical verdict, upon visualizing an untidy basket of interwoven threads of varying hues.
” ‘I must be strong in going,’ was uppermost in her mind. ‘I have gained nothing by lingering so long-and only done others harm-caused them inconvenience, worried the few who have shown concern. Lacking strength for noble deeds, this will offer part compensation, a forfelt to subsequent years that promised similar cycles of non-achievement.’
Voices Farewell
“Upon second thought, ‘If I should fail—‘ but that was too terrible to contemplate. She wouldn’t consider it.
“Farewell to all the ineffectual dreams and aspirations, beautiful and impracticable, glorious and non-existent.
“Farewell to friends – she had only been a burden to them, often stupid and misunderstanding their motives, not troubling to see from their point of view.
“Farewell to relatives, to whom most of her actions had ben inexplicable.
“Farewell to her brother, whose esteem was unwavering, who needed her support, and whom she was leaving.
“Farewell to them all – no remorse now – only regret.
“How slowly they were going. There were eight of them left to mark the passage of time and a few details crying out for attention – they would fill the last moments.
“How cheery the clock sounded, as though pleased with itself for playing so important a part in reckoning Carol’s oblivion. ‘It will not have long to wait, Carol. I wonder?’ was the natural query.
” ‘Perhaps I am writing drivel and silence were better, but I want them to know, even the bit that will be comprehended-it will be of little moment and soon forgotten, anyhow,’ she ended, wondering if that were true.
“The dog-eared phrase: ‘Survival of the fittest,’ Ah, but I do not belong in their ranks, for I have failed completely and they will go on. I wish them well.
” ‘Look down–look down, that lonely road, the hacks all dead in line:
“Some give a nickel: some give a dime, to bury dis po’ body o’ mine!'”
Miss Gill’s grandfather, Delancey Gill, is an illustrator with the Smithsonian Institution, and lives at the Rutland Courts Apartments, Seventeenth street and Riggs place. Her uncle, William H. Gill, an engineer with offices in the Transportation Building, Seventeenth and H streets, is handling the arrangements for the funeral.
Editor’s Note: This article appeared in the Washington D.C. Evening Star on October 23, 1930. The writer of this interesting obituary is unknown. The deceased young woman, a grand-daughter of the famous Delancey Gill, worked as a low-paid clerk in the book department of a large department store. Note today the struggles of workers at amazon.com and other places for a “living” wage. Too many are still working at what could termed a “death” wage, as illustrated by this poor soul who was penniless and took her own life.
The closing of the store came without prior notice to the employees (or the landlord for that matter). One day we came to work to find a crew of guys boxing up books, and were told that Cliff had sold the stock and closed the store. You can imagine the shock to the employees. The buyer of the books kept a couple of the employees on for a few days while unwanted stock was reduced and sold off, pretty much paying for the amount that he paid Cliff for the whole stock of 150,000 books. More on all this later, but this post is about Jerry Lang and Paul Johnson.
Jerry tried to find another job, but the suddenness of the closing made it almost impossible. He was, like most of us, “one paycheck away from being on the street.” More so because working at a used bookstore is financially 3 steps lower than working at a taco stand in Monrovia. And that is what happened to him. Without a job, he was unable to pay his rent and had to give up the apartment. The stress of all this hit him like a bolt of lightning, and he suffered a massive stroke. He ended up in a hospital and made a valiant fight to recover, but died this month undergoing surgery for an unrelated matter.
It’s always shocking to hear of a middle-aged person dying. Paul was as strong as an ox, and seemed to be in pretty good health, but both he and Jerry smoked, which did neither of them any good. In addition, Paul had hypertension due to a number of problems that I won’t go into, and smoked pot to keep down his blood pressure. Both he and Jerry were really good bookmen. Paul went to numerous book buys and estate sales and often came up with some rare and choice books for Cliff.
Another time, again late at night about 11:30 pm, Paul had come in to drop off something. He didn’t stay long, but called back to the store a few minutes later from the land line phone at the Annex. He had lost his phone again and asked me if I could call the number and walk around the shop and listen for the ring. It was a big shop, with three storefronts, back rooms, a paperback room, and an upstairs office where the “rare” books were kept. Believe me, it took a while just to walk around the place, and 30 or 40 dials to Paul’s cel produced nothing, not a peep. I called back to the Annex and asked him to come in and help me look for it.
