Beaux and Miss Nobody
Walker, Helen
December 9, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 125 BEAUX AND MISS NOBODY By HELEN WALKER IT WAS with all that startled surprise that comes to the very young on discovering for themselves a truth ...
...But those were in the serious days, when a party was not to be taken lightly, and the duty to appear at everything—even sometimes church —with one of those favored creatures, a man, was an imperative one...
...There was Marian, an extremely attractive friend who was so popular and sought-after that she was continually going to college house-parties, or week-ends in some other state, or comings-out in Washington...
...Ah, well, one somehow lives through such trying experiences, though at the time she wondered how...
...Surely some dire punishment awaits that callous florist for the disregard of his patron's interests, for the withered and desecated blooms, bearing a card on which was inscribed a tender message, such as "Wear these for my sake," or "These make me think of you," finally came to mean to their recipient only laughter...
...There was, for instance, the invitation to dine and go to the theatre with a young man whose family were endeavoring to "marry him off...
...Now the young man would far rather have remained at home reading, but being a dutiful son, he did, this particular week, extend two invitations, one to me, and one to my friend, Jane...
...He had to go on a journey, and informed her that he would write daily...
...Gone were the days when one's society was composed almost exclusively of the feminine sex...
...Well then, would I like to keep him during the winter ? He only ate a pound of steak a day, chopped fine and mingled with especially ordered dog-biscuit...
...As she wore it, on that deliriously terrifying, auspicious day of departure, her idea of the world, it is to be presumed, was much the idea of many other convent graduates—and not nearly so unworldly as the graduates of other schools might suppose it to be...
...It was a demure blue serge, purchased by a conscientious parent with a firm mind made up as to "what the young girl should wear...
...There was once an old philosopher who used to expatiate on the fleeting quality of the "glamour of the amour...
...Egan, I would like to present—" "Oh," interrupted Dr...
...I want you and Bingo to know one another," said his owner, who seemed delighted that the dog and I became congenial at once...
...And once a fortnight he had to be examined by a specialist just to see that he was quite fit...
...Sometimes it seemed almost to be a subtle lesson in control (for the blackest disgrace awaited one who laughed—or even smiled or nudged) and yet from the lips of this worldly-wise woman fell at times, along with sound advice on all possible social contingencies with which the outside world might be fraught, such admonitions as—"You must always beware of a man wearing a big, black moustache...
...December 9, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 125 BEAUX AND MISS NOBODY By HELEN WALKER IT WAS with all that startled surprise that comes to the very young on discovering for themselves a truth established since the beginning of the world, that I found that even a nobody can acquire teaux...
...She, too, had incorrigible brothers, only in her case they were younger—a situation which may be, as Mr...
...There was still much to learn...
...Your only raison d'etre in front of my door was to find a trained puppy-nurse for Bingo...
...My particular skirt fluttered out of convent portals...
...There were times when one wondered if one could not return again to the convent—when the inconspicuous black uniform would have seemed a solace rather than an irritation...
...The first two years being the hardest, and the realization growing that even a nobody could have beaux, such as they were, the tension relaxed gradually, and the importance of beaux in the scheme of things diminished in proportion...
...Toward the end of the summer, the youth announced that his parents were closing their house and that they were all going abroad for several months...
...It would seem then that convent graduates, faced with the way of the world which, socially, is a way of beaux, and timid about the elusiveness of the notoriously elusive male, should take heart...
...Of that strange, undiscovered world, I suppose the things in skirts that venture into it every year hold widely varying expectations, depending on what they have been led by differing systems of education and home environment to believe that it holds...
...For Barrie long ago pointed out that What Every Woman Knows is that woman was not fashioned out of man's rib—but out of his funny-bone—which is perhaps why the ridiculous is always waiting for her around the corner, ready to puncture romance at the critical moment by flinging derisively in her face, anything from dead flowers and African moss, to Bingoes...
...I had brothers— older brothers—gripped with the firm determination that all conceit in a younger sister should be exterminated with Mussolini-like firmness...
...The devoted swain who always put her on the train at home, and was ever there at the station to meet her on her return, was one of the gullible youths for whom the advertisers had composed the slogan—"Say it with flowers...
...This somewhat appalled her, for she wondered, as she could scarcely understand his spoken words, how she would ever be able to read the written ones—so she said that it would never do...
...Frequently he would ask me (a shade over-solicitously, I thought) how I liked the animal...
...He was interrupted at this moment by someone at my elbow, saying —"Dr...
...The plays were of very different character, yet meeting me at a party a week later, he asked seriously if I had seen such-and-such a play—naming the one we had watched together...
...but that, on the other hand, she would not like to leave them around where they might be read—perhaps even laughed at...
...Within the fastnesses of the convent and before one of those walnut-rimmed convent mirrors made especially to prevent the sin of vanity and reflect only one's worst possible points (which were prominent indeed if four years of convent fare had not seemed tempting to the pseudo-poetic temperament) I had tried on that jacket wrong side out, to determine whether it could be contrived that the flaming silk should not be lost to an admiring world...
...Nevertheless, it was a slightly different vision than that held by these latter, for echoes of four years of "Correction Class" (in its way, I believe, quite peculiar to the convent) rang in her ears...
...What more monumental reason exists in any school girl's mind...
...All that one needed was to be a girl...
...Her invitations came from hither and yon, without regard to distance, and she was perpetually traveling...
...Let's talk about me...
...You see Miss Nobody is one of the youngest of my oldest friends...
...That was the play I took Jane to see...
...She hinted to him that desecration threatened his letters—for she had no secret place to put treasures of the sort...
...When his altogether delightful speech was over, the young man sighed in relief, and said—uNow that that's over, we can talk...
...Oh, attentive youth...
...Although his English was almost unintelligible, she told me that she was able to gather that he fancied himself a victim of la grande passion...
...Hence it was that on sending a photograph taken in my first evening dress to a brother in college, he sent it back to me, having scrawled in pen and in imitation of my own handwriting across one corner of it—"Yours, SmushFace...
...African moss...
...I was able truthfully to reply that I adored Bingo, and at my repeated declarations of affection for him, his owner seemed oddly delighted...
...She had never been able to determine whether the advice of the extremely wise and very remarkable nun who presided over it had always been meant in earnest...
...It is possible, even for a nobody, to acquire these gentle, social necessities—but it is better to aim humbly for quantity rather than quality, and not to inquire too curiously into the motives inspiring their attention...
...Won't you please give me in return, a lock of your hair...
...A card in her suitor's elaborate Czecho-Slovakian penmanship lay on top...
...But the wretched tailor had stitched the seams in such a fashion that we were forced, the red silk lining and I, to succumb reluctantly to "what the young girl should wear...
...While she was wondering, all the available beaux were being snatched off from under her nose...
...It was an unfair comparison, but fate takes no account of fairness and makes no allowances for youth...
...Profound amazement accompanied the realization that neither beauty, nor charm, nor learning— nor that indefinite term that is used to blanket all that is indefinable—personality—were prerequisites to the acquisition...
...Then there was the youth who shone in the reflected glory of a prize cafe-au-lait bulldog and a red roadster...
...Now if one depended on girls for companions, it would be a solitary life, for the entire feminine world was accompanied by beaux...
...She went one evening, accompanied by a serious-minded youth just out of college, to hear the late Maurice Francis Egan, whom she had previously met on several occasions, speak...
...But directly underneath what he had written on it, another callous florist, who was proud of the plant and anxious to classify it, had also written something...
...Whenever a new frock was donned in pride and exhibited to four, cold fraternal eyes, the remark invariably would be—"All right but the face...
...Egan, charmingly, "you needn't bother...
...True, the quality of the beaux and their intentions might depend somewhat on how favored one had been by the gifts of the gods...
...and when I next saw Senator Walsh I determined to ask him—but courage failed on that occasion, and instead, we talked about the Democratic Convention...
...If he should ever attempt to be familiar with you, you should turn with dignity and say—'Young man, desist.' " Now for one thing, Mr...
...He had better not try writing at all...
...He had deliberately written the lines of Dr...
...She knew the beguiling eyes would lead him off, and leave her sitting against the wall on a stiff gold chair, deserted...
...What a dreary life...
...but beaux themselves—just beaux—were to be had in abundance by anything walking out in skirts from the alleged protecting walls of alma mater into the great, wide world...
...Pressed for reasons, she lamely remarked that she was sure his letters would be so poetically beautiful that she would be averse to destroying them...
...There were, in those days, more humiliations than victories...
...I wondered if Sister had him in mind...
...Can't you try walking backward...
...I saw it with you...
...If one aims for quality alone, the beaux will not be many, and it is better to have a reserve force to fall back upon...
...Booth Tarkington has suggested in his stories, worse...
...With judgment such as this passed upon one by two brothers, venerable and enlightened by five years' contact with the great world, how could one ever hope to acquire beaux...
...He came frequently on summer afternoons to invite me to drive, and always the cafe-au-lait bulldog rode with us...
...And yet, it had to be done, apparently—if for no other reason than that "other girls did it...
...It was then that I really began to enjoy not only my own, but those of others, and to recognize for the first time the delicious, perilous proximity of the ridiculous to the romantic...
...Even though he was an absent-minded youth, I could not, I reflected as I melted, literally, away, have been very stimulating company at the theatre...
...Invariably, these always came—but invariably, they were always dead...
...But she saw that he did not consider this a good plan, and the next day a florist's delivery motor drove up to her door and left a square package...
...They prescribed frequent parties a deux at the theatre, and determinedly provided tickets...
...he had his daily bath, and his exercise hours were from seven to eight, two to three, and nine to ten...
...Not being ready of speech, he did—so enthusiastically that his florist had orders to send to my friend at each new destination a large box of roses...
...and since, so she said, he led her to believe that she had inspired it, she naturally considered him a youth possessed of discrimination and taste...
...The ridiculous had killed the romantic...
...but it had its hopeful, if unperceived quality, in the red silk lining to its jacket...
...In the course of time, the appalling frequency with which similar catastrophes occurred, caused me to begin to wonder whether a sense of humor was a curse or a blessing...
...Gillette and others had long since seen to it that the day of the "big, black moustache" was ended—and the only one I had ever been privileged to gaze upon up to that time, was one worn by the charming, but grave, Senator Walsh of Montana...
...Let's talk about something interesting...
...But that was years later, and long after I had discovered that even a nobody can nave beaux...
...Comparison, the nobody found, is almost as deadly to romance as is the ridiculous...
...Egan and the serious-minded boy in cruel proximity, with the fell purpose of killing romance...
...Oh, red motor car...
...Thinking was safer...
...Who shall plumb the depths of anguish of that first year of dances, when escorted by a brother at the command of a parent—almost at the point of a pistol —the nobody went in pink satin slippers that were too tight, and simple pink chiffon dress too full in the skirt (again selected by rote as to "what the young girl should wear") and agonized when she saw the 126 THE COMMONWEAL December 9, 1925 beguiling eyes of a two seasons' debutante fall upon her brother ? The flesh is weak—and shy little sisters are a handicap at a party...
...It contained a tin box with lock and key attached—but the box was filled with a growing, short, fern-like plant...
...I was present on several occasions when the boxes were ushered in with ceremony, opened in the fluttering presence of other girls, and the remains viewed—not always reverently...
...Perhaps, the discovery came as a greater shock to this convent product than to others, less favored as well as less persecuted than she...
...Why, yes," I replied, somewhat surprised, and wondering if he were joking...
...It was to Daphne, a charming friend whose funny-bone was decidedly not paralyzed, to whom a poetic Czecho-Slovakian, recently arrived in America, began paying court...
...Did I still adore Bingo ? I did...
...I wonder if he did not ascribe its transience to the ridiculous...
...So it was that the card read—"For my letters...
...uOh, no...
Vol. 3 • December 1925 • No. 5
