ABSTRACT
Sessions’s personal and professional life got worse before it got better. The nadir and turning point of his career both occurred in late 1936. In 1933, after 13 years of marriage, Sessions and Barbara, who had returned from Europe separately, lived together in Northampton. Then Sessions moved to New York while Barbara stayed in Northampton, separating just as his own parents had done a third of a century earlier, also at the 13-year point in their marriage. The pattern of his parents’ marriage was repeating itself. After 1934 Barbara lived in Washington, DC, and in Maine. Sessions’s later explanation was that Barbara was enamored of the glamour of Europe and had difficulty readjusting herself to the austerity of Depression-ridden America. Another major problem, however, had reared its head: Sessions decided he wanted to have children and Barbara could not provide them. Ultimately, the decision to divorce was mutual, and he never spoke of her with bitterness.
