The Books: Betsy in Spite of Herself (Maud Hart Lovelace)

Children’s/ YA fiction Bookshelf:

Next book on the shelf is Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace.

This is about Betsy’s sophomore year in high school! More wonderful-ness. More trials and tribulations. Betsy decides to basically create another personality – more mysterious and glamourous and sophisticated – in order to capture the attention of the new kid in school – I think his name is Phil – and he drives a red jalopy (and cars are a huge novelty – so he is basically the coolest guys ever) – so Betsy tries to be different. Of course – by the end of the book – she realizes that she just has be herself … The. End. But still: wonderful book, just as good as Heaven to Betsy. It’s great because you follow the same cast of characters all the way through high school – you get to know them. I just loved these books.

Okay, so this excerpt. Summer vacation is coming to an end. Sophomore year is about to start. Everyone had a summer reading list – and everyone was supposed to have read Ivanhoe. Betsy already had read it – but everybody else was basically cramming. Staying up all night, trying to download Ivanhoe into their heads. And Betsy’s good friend Cab (a great character) keeps saying, “I’ll start tomorrow … I’ll get up at 6 and read the whole day …” but then something keeps happening, and he puts it off again. Betsy starts to get worried for him. There are end-of-summer picnics and gatherings – and every time Cab shows up at one Betsy is like, “Cab … you really need to start reading Ivanhoe …”

Anyhoo, on the first day of school – Tony and Cab (2 of Betsy’s friends) show up at her house early, before school starts – and say, “Look. We can’t read it. Why don’t you just tell us the story?”

So Betsy becomes Cliff Notes.

I love how this excerpt ends.

Excerpt from Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace.

Betsy gulped her cocoa and put the cup aside. She folded her hands on the table then, and Cab and Tony took chairs opposite and stared hard, as though by looking at that curly beribboned head they could absorb its precious knowledge of Scott’s masterpiece.

“Well,” began Betsy, and paused. She thought of Joe Willard and took a deep breath and started again. “I have to say something that will shock you. It’s a perfectly grand book.”

“What?” Cab and Tony cried together.

“Perfectly grand. If you don’t say so, Gaston will know you haven’t read it, because you couldn’t read it without liking it.”

Tony looked at her sharply. “You’re not fooling?”

Cab wrote down on his pad of paper, “Perfectly grand.”

Betsy decided to begin where Scott had.

“It begins,” she said, “in that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the River Don.”

Tony put down his pencil. “You are fooling!”

“No really. That’s the first sentence. It opens in a forest with a swineherd named Gurth, and Wamba, son of Witless …”

“See here, Betsy! In ten minutes we can only hit the high spots.”

“All right,” said Betsy, yielding. It saddened her that Cab and Tony should not know about Gurth and Wamba, and the meeting with the Pryor. She felt she was cheating them, but it couldn’t be helped.

“The important characters,” she said, “are Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a knight, returned from the Crusades; Rowena, the girl he’s in love with; Cedric, her guardian, who disapproves; Rebecca, a girl who’s in love with Ivanhoe; and some assorted villains.”

“Fine!” said Tony. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“King Richard’s in it, too. He went to the Crusades, and left England in charge of his brother Prince John, who’s a crook. Richard comes back to see what’s going on, disguised as the Black Knight. He comes to the tournament and on the second day when Ivanhoe is fighting three men at once …”

“A good fight?” asked Cab, leaning forward.

“Just the best one ever written, that’s all.” Betsy’s cheeks flamed. She told the story of the tournament and told it so well that Anna leaned across the table, breathing hard, Tacy’s eyes sparkled and the boys forgot to scribble notes.

“Betsy,” said her mother. “You’ll be late for school.”

They went out to an almost empty High Street with Betsy still talking, Tacy, Cab, and Tony now hanging on every word.

“Does Prince John give in, and admit that Ivanhoe won?”

“Yes, and Ivanhoe chooses Rowena to be Queen of Beauty.”

“Do they live happily every after?”

“Heavens, no! She’s kidnapped, and so is Rebecca. They’re held captive in a castle, with Ivanhoe, and the Black Knight storms it.”

They dropped down on the school steps, and Betsy kept on talking. The first gong rang and they moved slowly toward the upper hall where Betsy continued to talk until the second gong clanged.

“Anything else?”

“Remember the bad feeling between the Normans and Saxons.”

“What happens to Rebecca?”

“She goes into a convent.”

“Sounds like quite a tale,” drawled Tony, returning his notes to his pocket.

“Wilfred of Ivanhoe, Rowena, Cedric, Rebecca …” muttered Cab.

Tacy took Betsy’s arm. “It was wonderful the way you told it, Betsy.” And then Tacy too started muttering, “Wilfred of Ivanhoe, Rowena, Cedric, Rebecca …”

All through the morning, whenever Betsy looked toward Tacy, Tony or Cab she saw them muttering.

Mr. Gaston greeted the rhetoric class with a glance derisively bland. He gave the next day’s assignment, ignored the frantic whispering going on all over the room, and said casually, “Now I want each one of you to write me an essay on Ivanhoe.”

He leaned back in his chair and unfolded a scientific journal.

Betsy swept a glance around the room. Tony, Cab and Tacy were all muttering. Joe Willard looked as he had looked before he set to work on the Essay Contest last year. His paper, ink, and pen were ready and he was brushing his fingers thoughtfully over his yellow hair.

Betsy smiled at her paper. What a delightful assignment! What fun to write an essay on her beloved Ivanhoe! She dipped her pen in ink.

She began where she had tried to begin before, and now there were no Tony or Cab to cry, “Just give us the high spots, Betsy!” She told all about Gurth and Wamba and described the Lady Rowena’s beauty and Ivanhoe’s mysterious coming and the arrival of Rebecca and her father.

The clock said that half the allotted time was gone, so she hurried on to the tournament. She tried to make spears ring in her prose as they rang in Sir Walter’s. Now and then she almost thought she succeeded.

Looking up dreamily, she saw that Tony and Cab had already finished. Joe Willard still had his pen in his hand, but he was reading what he had written. Mr. Gaston had closed his magazine. He was tapping the desk and looking at the clock, obviously impatient.

Betsy rushed for the finish, scattering blots. But Rowena and Rebecca were still captive, the story hung in the air like a bright banner, when the gong sounded and Mr. Gaston said:

“You may leave your papers on my desk as you go out.”

Betsy was sorry she had not finished, but after all, she reflected, panting and warm from her attempt, Mr. Gaston would certainly see that she knew her Ivanhoe. It was nice what she had said about those silvery spears: and the part about Rowena’s hair. Even Sir Walter hadn’t thought to compare it to maple syrup.

“How did you get along?” she asked Cab anxiously.

“I think I did the noble work justice.”

“Mine was a masterpiece,” said Tony.

“Mine was all right, too,” said Tacy.

Betsy sighed in proud relief.

It was two days before Mr. Gaston returned the papers. And during those two days Ivanhoe continued to possess the Ray household.

“If Washington should have kittens … but he won’t, because he’s a boy … I’d name one Ivanhoe and one Rowena,” Margaret said.

Mr. Ray heard about Betsy’s fifteen-minute condensation of the masterpiece with a chuckle.

“I wonder how Cab and Tony will come out?”

“I think they will get Fair at least,” Betsy said. Mr. Gaston marked his papers Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor.

When the class filed in on the third morning the papers were piled on his desk. After roll call he tapped them condescendingly.

“These essays on Ivanhoe weren’t bad,” he said. “Really, they weren’t bad at all. Three of them are marked ‘Excellent’, and from a class of the mentality of this one, that’s pretty good.” Mr. Gaston liked to make that sort of joke.

Three ‘Excellents’! Betsy, without thinking, flashed Joe Willard a glance. She intercepted one from him, and they both smiled. Both felt sure where two Excellents had gone, but what about the third one?

“None of you,” Mr. Gaston continued, “will be surprised to hear that one ‘Excellent’ went to Joe. But the other two may startle you. They did me.”

He smiled mockingly.

“Tony and Cab,” he said, “drew ‘Excellents’ too.”

To say that the class was startled was putting it mildly. Tony and Cab grinned from ear to ear. Tacy threw up her hands in pantomime to Betsy.

“Tony and Cab,” Mr. Gaston continued, “turned in essays that showed they had read the book. I must admit, Cab, when you told me you had finished it, I had my doubts. But you and Tony obviously had not only read Ivanhoe. You had digested it. Therefore, your papers are brief, concise. You just …” Mr. Gaston’s smile for once was genuinely approving, “you just hit the high spots.”

Tony slipped down until the desk almost hid his face. Cab’s ears were red.

“Your admirably organized papers,” Mr. Gaston went on, “were in contrast to some I received. Some writers who, perhaps, had not even finished the book tried to show off their so-called literary skill at Scott’s expense.”

At that Betsy turned crimson. Mr. Gaston had spoken in the plural, but no one in the class would doubt that he meant her alone. For just a moment she was appalled. Then the joke in the situation struck her, and she smiled around at Cab, Tony and Tacy. Joe Willard was looking at her with a puzzled expression.

Tony and Cab after football practise, headed for the Ray house. They paused on the hill to pick a bouquet of sumac, goldenrod, asters and prickly thistles, and presented it to Betsy with sweeping bows. There was much joking and when Mr. Ray heard the story, he laughed until he shook.

But saying good-by to Betsy, Cab turned serious. He was, after all, Welsh Calvinistic Methodist.

“Betsy!” he said. He looked around to make sure that no one was listening. “Betsy, I just want you to know … I’m going to read the noble work. The whole five hundred and thirty-four pages. Darned if I don’t!”

And he did.