Ted was now nine years of age, and while life was a little easier financially, George Sutton was still a stern and strict Father in the God fearing manner of the times. Ted joined the work force as a carrier boy delivering the Farmers’ Advocate. Hating the circumstances of the impoverished family, he was determined to work his way out of the situation, a determination that never left him.
George’s brother, James Weir, the newspaper columnist from British Columbia, came through town in the summer of 1907 and, seeing how very keen Ted was to play baseball, took the boy downtown and outfitted him with a mitt, grander than anything Ted had dreamed of possessing, along with a good bat. Ted was ecstatic. However, after James left town, the shop sent George the bill. Perhaps it was James’ way of letting George know he had been hard on his children. “You can imagine what effect this had on my father’s temper,” Ted wrote to a relative years later.
Ruth was learning to get along in the business world. She was twenty-one, popular with a group of friends and, sensing the repressed atmosphere in the family, tried to ameliorate it in various small ways. She mailed cards to Ted and Paul for Easter, knowing how pleased they would be to receive their own mail, even though posted locally from London. By Christmas, the cards were posted from New York City, the message to Paul, a typical older sister admonition, “Don’t eat too much candy.” To Teddie she asked, “What will Santa bring you?” Ted’s answer, written the day after Christmas was that he and Paul “…got rubber boots from Santa and that there had been a Christmas tea party with a great many cousins.”
In early springtime of 1907 Paul had come down with mumps, but Martha and Ted apparently escaped. About the same time of the year, Ruth had noticed an advertisement in the Farmers’ Advocate offering positions to train young ladies as nurses in the Roosevelt Hospital in New York. Ruth left home on September 12, 1907 and, although she faithfully wrote letters to her mother at least once a week, Sarah felt her absence keenly. George’s father, Robert Weir, died the same year. Sarah had cared for him faithfully in his blindness for all the years he had made his home with them.
That Ruth found the regimen at Roosevelt Hospital arduous goes without saying. Sarah kept her many letters and they tell of long hours, the many cases of typhoid fever and her excitement at witnessing a transfusion, “a very rare operation,” she writes. When bats got into her ward, she told her women patients that they were sparrows. The incident apparently went off without panic. From her inquiries about the health of her family, it seems that George’s face had been a concern for some months, apparently a rash. As well, Ruth was disturbed about Sarah’s pain in her head and ears. “If your ears bother you, you should have them looked after. I lost a patient last week from septic meningitis induced by ear trouble.”
Sarah kept the invitation addressed to Dr. and Mrs. G.S. Weir to be present at Ruth’s graduation on Friday May 7, 1908, but either they could not afford the trip or George was reluctant to spend the money. Ruth continued to nurse at Roosevelt Hospital and on December 23, she sent a card to Martha, “How does the medal look?” Martha, now fourteen, had graduated with distinction from public school.
On September 12, 1908 Ruth wrote, “A year ago tonight, I was in Buffalo at this time.” Once when she had been on vacation, “Returned safely. I have to put in another year. I dislike it.” Nursing seemed to be Ruth’s avenue of escape from Sherwood Avenue. The next day she wrote, “I have a patient who weighs 400 lbs — hemiplegia and aphasia. A Catholic priest came to see her, a very handsome young priest. Another patient, typhoid, is going home. She is an actress and a widow by courtesy. She is a lady friend of the night city editor of The Sun and we are going to have dinner together.” Sarah’s reply to this has not been preserved so we can only conjecture what the reaction of Sarah might be and particularly of George, to their daughter’s hobnobbing with handsome young Catholic priests and her friendship with an actress of questionable reputation indeed. From both their backgrounds, there must have been misgivings about her exposure to sinful temptations.
With a growing worldliness, Ruth refers to her patients as “old frauds,” but she writes that she is pleased that the family is having gas illumination installed. “I suppose you will be turning night into day when the gas is installed — hope you don’t get in too deep. We have just been entertaining Father Walsh, the finest looking young priest.” Did she mean to provoke them, or was she letting them know in subtle ways that she was her own person now? Ruth continued to send postcards and short notes to Martha and the boys, always keeping in touch with their progress in school and their interests…to Martha, “How’s the French coming along?”… to Paul, “I will look after the watch and the gun and the shot. But you know I will not be home for a long time. Maybe not till a year from Christmas.” — to Ted, “Thanks for the Easter card.” Sometimes there was no message, just “Dear Ted” on a postcard.
By now the family’s finances had improved to the extent that the Sherwood Avenue home contained a piano. Both Ted and Paul were given lessons by a Miss Northcott who came to the house. Ted continued to love playing baseball although at various times there was concern that he had some sort of heart trouble. When he was almost twelve, Sarah went to Duluth to be with her sister Mary in her second childbirth. She stayed with Mary until she felt her sister could cope and sent a postcard of a laker to Paul with the message, ‘How would you like to see a sight like this, Paul?” The boat was laden with 150,000 tons of coal. To “Teddie dear,” she wrote, “We will soon be home so keep your courage up. Uncle (Will) says he will send something beside the ball for the ‘little boys.’” Sarah brought the baby, Shirley, back to London in June of 1910. In October, Ruth took Shirley back to her mother in Duluth, writing to Sarah that, “Baby was fine all the way. Mary is pretty tired and so am I. Uncle Will is as fresh as a daisy.” Ruth remained in Duluth to do private nursing for a period of time.
Sarah’s remark to Teddie on courage may well have been occasioned by the effects of an attack of George’s ulcer in her absence. More than likely it was a recurrent ulcer disease caused by an infection which resulted in a chronic and painful inflammation for which there was no real help or cure until antibiotics. George suffered periodically and his family suffered along with him.
Ted worked hard at his studies, but it was Martha who stood first in her class year after year and it was Martha whom the family considered the ‘real student.’ Paul was not inclined to excel at school work, his injuries and illness from earliest childhood no doubt contributed to his difficulties. As well as delivering papers, Ted began to work in the Post Office as soon as he was fourteen. During rush seasons, he brought a little money from the sorting departments in to the household. “Letters,” he later wrote to an art dealer in England who had sent him an etching which had arrived rather bent, “are handled rather respectfully but packages are thrown all over the offices, sometimes as far as fifty or seventy five feet. The mail sorters get a good skill at throwing things into bags a long distance away and they won’t bother to walk with them.” This first hand information doubtless accounted for the detailed instructions Sam gave to various art dealers later on and his fury when his instructions were not carried out.
It was while Ted, or Sam as he now wanted to be known to the world at large, was working in the Post Office that he noticed a lithograph in a shop window. He passed it by many times and finally decided to part with fifty cents, a not inconsiderable sum of money in 1912, and take it home. It was the first acquisition, a lithograph of Sir Wilfred Laurier from the J.W.L. Forster portrait, in what was to become the consuming passion of his life, amassing a remarkable and significant collection of Canadian art and artifacts, along with an extensive library.
During