Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Chapters 1 and 2

Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown by Maud Hart Lovelace is the fourth Betsy-Tacy book, set in 1904-05 and published in 1943.  The girls are now 12 years old and in the seventh grade. 

It is time for Betsy, Tacy and Tib’s world to be expanded in another direction.  The trio is now 12.  When Downtown opens, Betsy is in her beloved maple tree from which she can see the town of Deep Valley, Minnesota.   She sees four places that MHL knows will be important to her (and to us!), “the Opera House, the Melborn Hotel, the skeleton of the new Carnegie Library, and the high school that her sister Julia and Tacy’s sister Katie attended.”  She is aware of a world unexplored.  

 

Betsy has one of the notebooks from her father’s shoe store and is working on a dramatic-sounding story, The Repentance of Lady Clinton by Betsy Warrington Ray.*   Even before Tacy appears to reveal that her father found their borrowed copy of Lady Audley’s Secret and threw it in the fire.

“He said it was trash.”

“Trash!” cried Betsy.  “I’m trying to write books just like it.”

Julia has the first of many beaux.  How does she do it?  “Why does he look at her like that? She’s only Julia,” Tacy whispered.

The girls wheedle 15 cents from Julia’s beau Jerry, who goes to Cox Military, and go downtown to Cook’s Book Store to replace the book.   They have to get permission and the trip turns into an adventure.  First, they buy the book (more on Cook’s later), then they run into their bold classmate Winona Root who is on a bicycle and has exciting news, which she holds out on for dramatic effect: there is a horseless carriage in Deep Valley!   It belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Poppy who own and live in the Melborn Hotel.

Everyone has shut their businesses to see this amazing sight and the girls rush over as well.  At the last minute Tib boldly asks for a ride and Mrs. Poppy pulls her aboard, much to the chagrin of Winona who had been angling for the privilege.  The crowd cheers as the car sets off.   It is particularly poignant to see Mr. Ray having fun, not in his usual role as protector.

Betsy caught a glimpse of her father . . . he was throwing his hat into the air.  For just a moment, he did not look like her father; he looked like a boy.

Although outmaneuvered by Tib, Winona is never at a loss for long.  She moves on from the auto ride to boast that she has four tickets to see Uncle Tom’s Cabin which is being performed at the Opera House.  Even 50 years after publication, this book is still well known and the girls long to attend.  But in the meantime, they can enjoy the glory of the horseless carriage vicariously through Tib and boast to everyone in their neighborhood, including Jerry who sounds like he might have passed up the unchaperoned afternoon with Julia for a ride himself!

Questions:

Do you remember a time when there were neighborhood places that were out of bounds to you until a certain age or were accompanied?  

Did you have to hide your copy of Forever or something equally risqué?    I remember checking out Katherine by Anya Seton in 7^th grade and instinctively hiding it under my pillow (not a good place as it was found at once but it turned out my mother loved the book and didn’t tell me it was too old for me). 

What was the first new technology that changed your life?  I don’t recall being wowed by anything until I got an ATM card right before I started college.  I remember my father warning me to never use it alone in case I got attacked from behind (any thief would have been disappointed by my low balance).

Did anyone else try to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Lady Audley’s Secret at age 9 or 10?   I tried but was unsuccessful.

Do you like Winona?  

Literary/Musical/Historical Allusions:

DeWolf Hopper – Jerry says modestly he is no DeWolf Hopper.  Hopper was a vaudeville and musical theater star, and became best known for performing the popular baseball poem "Casey at the Bat."  Even if he never made it to Deep Valley, he would have been known to fans.  For nine years, he was married to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.

DeWolf Hopper 

Brown October Ale was a song from Robin Hood, the comic opera Julia had just attended.  Like anyone who has just seen a show she wants to relive the experience so she would have bought the sheet music or received it as a gift and learned how to play it.   The composer, Harry B. Smith, was one of the most prolific of all American stage writers; said to have written over 300 librettos and more than 6000 lyrics.   Listen here.

Cox Military Academy – Jerry and later Tom Slade attend Cox Military Academy.  It is based on Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, MN, which was founded in 1858 and was one of the oldest and most respected college preparatory boarding schools in the Midwest.  Its most famous alumnus is Marlon Brando although he was expelled before graduating. 

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862) was a sensational bestseller in its day by a prolific author.  A former governess who married for money, Lady Audley’s secret is that she is a bigamist although she believed her first husband was dead when she remarried.  When he reappears, she tries to kill him to retain her position and status and, initially, gets away with it.

Father Finn – Mr. Kelly thinks Tacy should have been reading better quality literature such as the Dickens or Shakespeare sets the Kellys own.  I never previously noticed the reference to Father Finn.  Father Francis J. Finn (1859-1928) was a beloved Jesuit from the Midwest who wrote a series of children’s books that sound like a blend of Dickens and Horatio Alger.  A few are available on Project Gutenberg if you want to take a look.  By the way, don’t you think if Tacy had spoken up, Mr. Kelly would not have burned a book that belonged to someone else.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) vividly depicted the experience of slavery for readers throughout the country and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War."  Uncle Tom is a noble slave who saves the life of a white girl, Little Eva.  Her grateful father then purchases Tom. When Eva dies young (as happened a lot in the fiction of this era), on her deathbed she asks her father to free all his slaves. He dies before that can happen and Tom’s new owner is the brutal Simon Legree, whose name becomes a synonym for cruelty.  He has Tom whipped to death on some pretext.  Unlicensed productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were common throughout the US.

* It always bothered my mother and me when Betsy uses this form of her name because if you are being formal by using your middle name why wouldn’t you say Elizabeth Warrington Ray instead of Betsy?   See Betsy’s high school graduation where Miss Bangeter inexplicably uses this version as well.

This post is part of a Group Read on the Maud-L discussion group.  Special thanks to Sharla Whalen's The Betsy Tacy Companion.