ABSTRACT

This chapter presents conversation letters between Thorstein Veblen and Sarah Hardy; Sarah Hardy and Warren Gregory; Ellen Veblen and Sarah Hardy Gregory; and Thorstein Veblen and Ellen Veblen. Two months after Thorstein Veblen wrote her of his hopeless love, Sarah Hardy was married to Warren Gregory, at her father's house in Kauai, Hawaii. There must have been some "tangible ground" for Veblen's intuition that Miss Hardy's motive for marrying Warren Gregory was not a passion for Gregory. Veblen wrote a confession to Ellen, when he had known for two months that Miss Hardy was about to marry someone else. One assumes that he did not expect the young student to change her mind, even though he mentioned a probable divorce from Ellen. Perhaps the passion Veblen had for Sarah had awakened him to the fact that he had been living a zombie life with Ellen, and no matter what, he had to get out to save his soul.