essaysbysean.blogspot.com
Headnote: My mother died in August. Rest in Peace.
Call me a time traveler: From
1926, just three years after my mother was born, I found a romance novel for young
ladies, Coming Through the Rye. Mum
would have liked it—maybe she did. Here is the land of roadsters, mirthful
illegal drinking, and girls with their hair bobbed. The heroine, as someone
older remarks with approval, still has her hair long. Her name is Romayne,
recently finished high school. (Now she
is marriageable, to be read about by girls still in school) Romayne’s
mother has long passed away; her father is what I would call “shabby rich”:
distinguished, honest and proud. Her older brother has an honest job. Or so it all
would seem, at first.
The story opens
with Romayne taking a suitcase by train alone to spend a few days, along with
other girls, at the home of a truly rich girl. But when she arrives, no one is
there but the rich girl. No party. The girl, the very next day, will be going
with her mother to Europe (by ship, of course) so she has canceled the party.
She claims the notice of the party cancelation must be still in the mail.
Claims. The truth is, the seemingly “honest” rich girl forgot Romayne. Here is
the novel’s main theme: Some people are not what they seem, and some
people don’t have good character.
In the book before
me, half hidden by the end flap, is a pasted award notice: A girl in fifth
grade, in a Canadian Atlantic province, was awarded the book for winning an
essay contest. I wonder what became of her? That girl was like my late mother,
who once won a big thick Robin Hood
book by Howard Pyle. As a boy, Mum let me neatly pencil crayon in the full-page
illustrations. Mum would have protected herself from feeling “less than” the rich
society surrounding her by saying she was “poor but honest,” and muttering
about “the English,” to feel ethnic pride. Maybe like an Arab-American today,
who might mutter about Islam being a victim, and call herself Muslim, not Arab.
Poor Mum: She not
only grew up poor, but then lived poor as a housewife. (Her first fiancé was
shot down in the Battle of Britain) We seldom had new books. All of our Hardy Boys books came from Grandma.
Those books, Nancy Drew, and, in the
1950’s, Tom Corbet, Space Cadet, were
all published by Grosset and Dunlap, as was Coming
Through the Rye. I recognized the font like an old friend.
On the back of Rye are listed many titles. I suspected
the lady called “Mrs. Hill” on the end flap was a shared pen name, as fake as
Franklin W. Dixon. (Not so) Across the top reads: Inspiring, Wholesome Novels by Grace Livingston Hill. I am sure her
view of Life and Romance was common in her time, which makes her book so fascinating,
like traveling by time machine.
My wholesome mother
once made her sister jealous by earning a prayer rug. Maybe, just like Romayne,
my mom taught Sunday school and visited her students when they were sick in
bed.
Back to Romayne: In her
world, there are girls who don’t even try to be wholesome, girls who have never
embraced honesty as a lifestyle choice. (I remember how one of my brothers, as
he finished high school, hung around with cads: He said that, unlike his
athletic and academic friends, they believed in “having a good time”) The
dialogue in Rye shows such girls
slurring their words: obviously a marker of their lack of self-discipline.
Also, to show their lower class.
One such girl’s
mother becomes angry at finding out that her daughter, who has been claiming to
be staying overnights with a friend to study stenography, has in fact been riding in cars with boys. (Sounds like a
movie title: human nature never changes)
QUOTE (p 62) “Ain’t it bad
enough to go with a young man that drinks and carries whiskey round in his car?
I ask you, Frances May Judson, was you brought up to do things like that? You,
a baby, that oughtta be goin’ to school yet, running round in the night to
hotels in the woods, dancin’ with men you don’t know their names! I ain’t got
words to tell you what I feel about it. It’s no use.”
“But, Mamma, he’s
a real classy young man, and his car was something swell. We didn’t have whiskey
either. It was a real refined kind of wine.”
“Fiddlesticks end!
Don’t talk like as fool! … And whaddaya think a classy young man wants with a
girl like you outta tha ten-cent store, an’ her papa runnin’ a truck? You don’t
s’pose he was meanin’ to make real
friends with you, did you? Them kind don’t. They wouldn’t wipe their feet on
you before their own home folks. They just run with you to act crazy and then
they throw you away and don’t care what becomes of you. Talk about classy young
men, Frances Judson! There’d be some class to you ef you kep up that sortta
thing. You wouldn’t be even in the workin’ class. You’d be outside where folks
don’t count you at all. There ain’t never any of family been like that, child.
We’ve always ben respectable, an’ that’s a sight cleaner an’ better than bein’
classy. Some time you’ll find that out. Now go upstairs and I’ll do my duty by
you.” UNQUOTE
Through the window
of our time machine we see that parents use corporal punishment, and we observe
the police, portrayed in Coming Through
the Rye, as not being too finicky
about violence either.
In the end, Romayne
finds romance—a proposal of marriage!—from a nice, young, highly respected attorney.
Readers know before Romayne does whom she will wed, from reading the front
flap: Can a girl bring herself to love a
man who has sent her father and brother to prison? The jailing happens in chapter two. Of course Romayne is shocked. Alas, people are not what they seem.
Romayne desperately
needs to make a living. She ends up as a servant-secretary in a remote huge mansion
with wide verandas. (Eventually, she faces gothic danger) The estate echoes the
girl’s canceled party in chapter one: Here rich people drive up and stay; here
the “beautiful people” break the law (during prohibition) by drinking liquor. A
girl from high school days arrives as one of the guests; she spurns Romayne for
being only a servant, and further, with ill will, she informs the host,
Romayne’s employer, that Romayne is a
criminal’s daughter. Again the theme: one can be rich and still be of poor
character. (Romayne’s father and brother were bootleggers)
Character always counted
with my mum; she always remembered how a certain prominent businessman cheated
in high school. Mum would tell us this whenever he was mentioned on the radio. My
dear mother, needless to say, was a happy virgin when she married—just like
everyone else who read Mrs. Hill. One might ask: Did our post-Victorian
ancestors, back in 1926, know about sex? What would you dare write about “romance”
to that girl who won the book in fifth grade?
Perhaps you could hint,
as in the above “…and then they throw you away and don’t care…”
The Victorians, of
course, at the time of our western settlements, according to the written
records they have passed on down to us, believed that men married women because
women were so angelic, offering qualities that men lacked, such as tenderness,
and so forth. Well, it wasn’t quite that way in 1926. After Romayne is reduced
to selling her household furniture, a boy she knew in school tries to help, but
he turns beet red and mops his forehead. Romayne speaks:
QUOTE (p 257) “What on
earth are you trying to tell me, Chris? What is it you want to ask? Don’t be
afraid to say it right out?” urged Romayne.
“I’m asking you to
marry me, Romayne!” broke forth the earnest boy. “I know I ain’t good enough. I
don’t have your class and all that, but you’ve gotta be taken care of and
that’s the only nice way I could do it. I’ll love you lot if that’ll make up
any way. I’ve always loved you. You’ve been like an angel in my life, so pretty
and so good, and so little! And I’ll learn anything you want’ and get to be the
best I can—“
“Oh, Chris!” said
Romayne with sudden tears in her eyes. “You dear Chris! Please don’t! It’s
wonderful of you, but I couldn’t! I couldn’t
possible ever marry you! I’m not going to marry anybody! But it’s not because you’re not good enough! Chris’ you’re
the best thing I know. But I just don’t feel I could. I think a lot of you, but
there’s something more to marrying than that. You have to love people in a different
way. And I don’t love anybody that
way! I don’t really! It wouldn’t be fair to you, you know.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t
ask you to do that!” said Chris wistfully. “I’d do the loving, and you could
have things your own way. I wouldn’t mind!”
“Chris, you are
wonderful! And I’ll never forget it of you, never! That’s the biggest sacrifice
a man make for a woman, to just put aside himself and let her have her way, and
if I live a hundred years I’d never find a greater love than that, I knew. But Chris,
that isn’t real marriage. I’m sure it isn’t. My mother has told me that. I
could love you like a brother, and I will. My own brother has forsaken me, but
you’ve done more for me than he ever did. But I couldn’t marry you! It would be
wrong!”
“…”
“…, but you tried
to give me yourself. I think it’s that’s the most beautiful thing anybody ever
did. I shall keep it in my memory like a treasure and some day when you find a
dear girl who loves you and whom you love, I shall tell her what a wonderful
brother you’ve been to me, and how glad I am I wasn’t selfish enough to let you
do what you offered, and saved you for her.”
“There’ll never be
anybody else like you, Romayne!”
“There’ll be
somebody better, Chris! Somebody who loves you that way! Somebody God made for
you!” UNQUOTE
Yes, our ancestors
knew about sex, and “that way.” If not the fifth grade boys, then at least the fifth
grade girls. I’m still laughing at a teacher’s quip, “Girls at age fifteen are
going on twenty-five, boys at fifteen are going on five.” Incidentally, Romayne
and her fiance become dreamy lovebirds after an embrace.
A time machine vacation to 1926 is all very well, such a nice escape, but could there be any serious
lessons to be learned from the trip?
You may recall how
in the 1960’s, during my boyhood, hippies lived by handouts, as part of their hippie
lifestyle. My mother, as a poor girl, once had sores in her mouth, so bad that she
couldn’t talk, because she wasn’t eating balanced meals. Later, as a housewife with
six children, Mum desperately tried to scrape pennies to give us proper
nutrition. Of course she had no use for the longhaired hippies she saw eating
stupid potato chips. (Crisps) I remember those hippies, and in later years
computer pirates, justifying their drugs and their stealing by saying,
“Prohibition never works.” I say, “(Expletive
deleted!).”
For this next
quote, think of any drug you like. In 1926 prohibition was for alcohol. Romayne
is isolated, serving in a mansion:
QUOTE (p 305) There really
was only one thing about her new position that troubled her, and that at times
was very hard for her to endure. She found that it was almost unbearable to
have so much drinking going on about her…. These people were the kind who had
helped father to sin, and dragged her brother into what she could not help
feeling was degradation. They drank partly to assert their right to do so,
against the law of the land and the protest of a few fanatics—as they called
them—who were trying to force everybody to do as they did
They drank on all
occasions. Highballs and cocktails were ever being passed. Flasks were the
order of the day upon all rides and picnics. It was everywhere and apparently
all their kind used it. They drank when they were hot and when they were cold,
when they were gay and when they were sad. Sometimes their high, excited voices
and flushed faces made Romayne turn sadly away and feel that she could not
possibly spend her days among people who were so utterly different from what
she wanted to be. UNQUOTE.
“They” said the
law came from fanatics. Peter Drucker, citizen and business writer, said the
law came from parasites.
Those parasites
were like today’s Green Party members, who have an overly focused green agenda,
but the fanatic’s agenda was even more
focused, they were even less
concerned with the good of the country as a whole. Like today’s radical
terrorists, the prohibitionists wouldn’t acknowledge the complexities of
society, let alone try to weigh and balance funding, actions and priorities,
all for the greater public good. No. As regards the body politic, then, they
were not conventional citizens: The prohibition movement would use the structures of democracy, but
without the spirit of democracy, using “swing” marginal votes to elect a
politician based solely on their single issue.
When my mom
learned to drink, it was at a kitchen table with my Auntie Flora. For the rest
of her life, whenever she got drunk, poor Mum would sound just like Flora. As a
boy I could see Mum loved her beer, and in her old age she loved her hot water
with whiskey. And all the while, as little boys and girls would be seeing their
aunts and uncles drinking, the children would be playing at drinking too, by pretending
to be cowboys in saloons. Against these facts, of course prohibition would not
work—who’s going to deny dear Granny her hot toddy?
But if a drug like
heroin, say, is not yet established in the civil ecology, if children don’t yet
see beloved aunts shooting up with a needle, if no hero on TV is shown
pirating, then yes, prohibition may work… If you do drugs in the privacy of
your own home, then please don’t happily show me your needle, and don’t show my
niece. As for piracy, please don’t show me what you’ve pirated—and don’t you
dare try to justify yourself to me by saying, “Prohibition never works.”
(Expletive)
Call me straight,
but I’ve chosen to “take the high road,” same as Romayne and my dear mother.
There is another lesson from the days of 1926, back when there was a focus on social class, and
I’m sorry to say it brings me no cheer.
As a boy I watched
a TV series, later a 1987 movie with Sean Connery, called The Untouchables. Based on a book, pictured in the weekly TV
credits, a book inspired after one of the detectives unthinkingly used Mum’s
old phrase, “I’ll tell the cockeyed world.”
I remember a TV scene,
where the city crime boss, on neutral ground, is criticizing the head of the
detective squad, saying how poor he is. The detective ducks his head when the
boss reaches out to show he can’t even afford a good haircut. At one level,
this is crime versus being straight, rich city mouse versus country mouse. At another
level, this reflects a society with only a little shrimp-sized middle class.
Not the jumbo-sized class of my favorite decade, the 1950’s, but instead, an era where the many worked to keep the few
in a good life. I don’t want to return to that 1926 world, but that’s where
we are headed. Yes, we are.
The graph lines—which I have never seen shown in the media—are
clear and utterly unmistakable. A fellow in a Robert Heinlein novel once said,
sarcastically, “Water runs downhill, but praise the Lord, it’ll never reach the
bottom.” The graphs are going down, down, down… while Michael Moore documents
such things as the government secretly helping American businesses to relocate to
foreign countries, and on and on. Unless something changes, the graphs won’t
level off.
I don’t know the
future. But I have seen 1926.
Sean Crawford
Calgary
2016
Footnotes:
~I wrote of U.S.
citizens being in denial where I reviewed the book A Time to Start Thinking in my essay America Down the Chute, archived May of 2015.
~I documented
Michael Moore’s secret agent work in Mexico in The Madness of Michael Moore, archived March of 2016.
~As for the book’s
title, the song Coming Through the Rye
is as meaningless as the name for a car or racehorse. It happens to be an old
tune in Japan, from before the post-war occupation, from before the Japanese would
kiss. I once heard a Japanese boy at college, hanging around a working Japanese
girl, using the tune to flirt.
There was a
Japanese novel (translated to English) where a starving girl, at death’s door,
at the war’s end, is hiding in a cave. She hears the tune and uses the last of
her strength to come out, only to find an American devil-soldier was the one
whistling. (Such fearful determined Japanese: the Bomb saved a lot of lives)
…During the
occupation Japanese housewives devoured romance books by a G.I. that featured
kissing. Decades later, his death of old age made the newspapers. Back in Scotland, Rye is a very old folk song where
lassies have to lift their skirts with both hands to walk across the shallow
Rye River, giving the lads a chance to kiss them in passing, according to the Art Linkletter Picture Encyclopedia for Boys
and Girls. We sang Coming Through the
Rye (in English) in school.
~The book cover sticker
reads:
The Sons
of Temperance
KINGS COUNTY, NOVA
SCOTIA
is pleased to present
this book to
…Darlene Rogers…
student
of Grade …5… of …
L. E. Saw Avonport… School
as a prize in the
ESSAY CONTEST conducted by the
District Division
and associates.
Posts
