The Books: Betsy Was a Junior (Maud Hart Lovelace)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA fiction shelf:

Next book on the shelf is Betsy Was a Junior by Maud Hart Lovelace.

If I had to choose – I might say that this is the best one of the series. I remember the sensation reading it the first time – and it made me feel uncomfortable, because I could see that she was making all these bad choices, and I didn’t like her priorities, and I felt like reaching through the pages and telling her to stop being so SILLY. But because of all of that – the catharsis at the end of the book, the resolution – is really well-earned. I love that I’m talking like this about BETSY WAS A JUNIOR, for God’s sake, as though it’s Prometheus Bound or something. Oh well. My well-loved books are ALWAYS well-loved books and I guess I take them seriously. I don’t blow stuff off as “Wow, that’s just for kids.” You know?

This is (duh) about Betsy’s junior year. Betsy’s older sister Julia goes off to college – and sends home stories of being courted by various sororities. It seems like the only way to really belong is to join a sorority – although Julia was never really a joiner. Betsy gets the idea to create sororities and fraternities in their high school – and the whole thing just takes off. People have to rush, and then there’s a selection process – and naturally, although it’s really fun for those who are “chosen” – a lot of resentment builds up about the whole thing from people who were either rejected or not interested in the first place. The social gatherings of the sororities and fraternities take over … They are THE events to go to, blah blah, but you need to be invited … Whatever. Reading the whole thing, and reading how Betsy kind of doesn’t have time to be friends with a nice girl in her class named Hazel – who obviously is a sort of kindred spirit – but she’s not in the sorority so that’s THAT. Schoolwork gets put off, yadda yadda. Tacy is not really involved in all of this – she remains as steadfast as ever, never really a silly person – but Betsy starts dressing her hair in a huge pompadour, she starts to wear a fur muff and fur cloak thingie to school – Betsy becomes kind of obnoxious actually.

It’s a good book.

Here’s an excerpt, which kind of gives you an idea of why I found these books soooo fascinating. It just feels so REAL, first of all – and I felt like it could have been describing my own experience in high school – even though I lived in the 1980s, and Betsy was back in 1910 or whatever. It was all the same stuff. Friendships, and crushes, and schoolwork, and dances … But there was an added layer of glamour in these books (at least I thought so) because it was back in “olden days” … and the girls wore pompadours, and shirtwaists, and the boys had watchchains … and it all just seemed hopelessly romantic and I wanted to step into the pages of the book.

Excerpt from Betsy Was a Junior by Maud Hart Lovelace.

January had been mild, but February came in cold and snowy. The air was filled continually with a white descending haze. Drifts climbed to the window ledges. The thermometer dropped to twenty, thirty, thirty-five below. Tacy and Tib, stopping to call for Betsy in the morning, wore scarves over their faces.

Tib came early so that she could do Betsy’s hair. Mr. and Mrs. Ray both protested the practice.

“Betsy doesn’t need puffs for school.”

“But I’m coming right past the house, Mrs. Ray. I always stop anyway; and I love to do them.”

She continued to come, and although Betsy felt a little silly she delighted in the puffs. Sustained by them she joined Tacy in singing the “Cat Duet” at Zetamathian Rhetoricals. It was definitely childish but it had to be sung; it had become a tradition in the Deep Valley High. Betsy read an original poem for rhetoricals. It was named “Those Eyes” and sounded a little like Poe. She wrote more poems than stories on Uncle Keith’s trunk this year – when she found time to write at all. This was usually late at night, when she had finished her homework or come in from a party. The house would be quiet; cold, too, sometimes, but she put on a warm bathrobe. She curled up beside the trunk and read poetry and wrote it, and she had an uncanny feeling then, too. This wasn’t Betsy Ray, the “popular” girl. This wasn’t Betsy Ray, the Okto Delta.

The Sistren still met regularly, sometimes with boys, sometimes alone. The girls brought their sewing to the afternoon parties, and Betsy always brought the jabot. She offered to read aloud if someone would work on it for her and the famous piece of neckwear passed from hand to hand.

“What a souvenir for college!” Carney said. “Samples of everybody’s sewing, as well as all these choice knots and spots.”

“Those spots you refer to so lightly,” said Betsy, “are where I was pricked by a needle. You’re taking my heart’s blood to Vassar.”

Carney was looking ahead to the Vassar entrance exams and worked harder all the time. Tacy was sobered by a growing interest in music, but Betsy and Tib continued irrepressible.

Madame DuBarry and Madame Pompadour revived their soirees. These were hilarious affairs, for Cab and Dennis were irrepressible, too. Fast friends, the same age and about the same height, they were a carefree pair. They were, Betsy admitted, more fun than Dave.

But he was fun, too, on outdoor excursions. Groups of four, six, eight Okto and Omega Deltas often braved the cold for moonlight strolls. One night for a lark boys and girls exchanged wraps. Dave was as comical as Dennis, parading in Betsy’s furs. He was always the first to sight a pan of fudge set to cool on a doorstep – lawful booty, whether the doorstep belonged to a friend or a stranger.

In recompense for stolen fudge, perhaps, the groups went serenading. They sang in parts underneath lighted windows, their breath congealing into silver notes.

“Old, old is honeymoon trail …”
“You are my rose of Mexico …”
“My wild Irish rose …”

The Crowd, Julia often said, sang like a trained chorus. But the Okto and Omega Deltas were not quite the Crowd. They missed Tony’s rolling bass.

As Betsy had feared, they saw Tony less and less. He still came to the Rays’ now and then but he had dropped the Crowd and what he had put in its place was not good. He skipped school, hung around a pool hall which had a bad reputation in Deep Valley. He went with that fast clicque of older boys he had been drifting toward early in the winter. Tony had always had a zest for new experiences whether good or bad. But he had been restrained before by his scornful, indulgent, deeply loyal fondness for the Crowd.

Betsy felt pricked all the time by worry about Tony. She wouldn’t give in to it; she was having too much fun. But she looked for a chance to say a restraining word and one Sunday night she thought she saw it.

Sometime before she had revived her last year’s successful experiment in “reforming”. Phil’s pipe still hung beside her dressing table. She discovered that Dave had a pipe and secured it to hang beside Phil’s. Dennis gave her a sack of tobacco and some cigarette papers. Cab contributed a cigar.

Betsy had protested that. “You don’t smoke! You’re giving me one of your father’s cigars.”

“Well, gosh Betsy,” Cab grinned. “If everyone else is going to be reformed, I want to be reformed too.”

Her father teased her about this enterprise and he brought up the subject as Tony and Betsy stood out in the kitchen watching him make his inimitable sandwiches. He always sat down to make them for he was growing heavier and his feet tired easily. There was often an admiring circle around his chair.

“Have you heard about Betsy turning Carrie Nation?” he asked, spreading slices of bread with butter which he had set out to soften earlier. A cold loin of pork and a jar of mustard stood alongside. “I can’t make out why she doesn’t object to my cigars.”

“You’re too old to reform,” said Betsy, smoothing his silky dark hair.

Tony searched through his pockets and found a piece of billiar chalk.

“Here,” he said. “Add this to your collection. You ought to try to keep boys away from the pool hall, Betsy. It’s a den of iniquity, Miss Bangeter says.”

Betsy said she would tie the chalk on a ribbon and hang it over her mirror. She laughed into Tony’s black eyes which looked hurt, although he was smiling. A new group of guests came to watch Mr. Ray and Betsy went back to the fire. Tony followed with his lazy saunter.

They sat down and looked into the flames, and Betsy said, imitating a grave tone of Julia’s, “There was truth in what Miss Bangeter said about that pool hall, Tony. I wish you’d spend less time there and more time – well, at the Rays’, or out serenading with the Crowd.”

“What Crowd?” asked Tony. His face looked a little bitter. “There isn’t any Crowd any more, just a couple of frats. I’m a barb. You don’t want me around.”

“Tony!” said Betsy. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous, am I?”

“Everybody misses you. The Crowd, Pap, Mamma, Margaret.”

“You said one true thing. Margaret does.” Tony called out to Margaret, who was reading the funny papers in her father’s big chair. “Margaret, I’ll beat you a game of parchesi.”

Margaret’s face lighted and she ran to get the board. Betsy felt snubbed.

Dave came in just then, followed shortly by Squirrelly, and Tib, and Winona. Winona went to the piano and when the parchesi game ended Tony lifted his voice in song. But after the sandwiches were eaten he quickly said good-bye.

He shrugged into his overcoat, set his cap at a rakish angle on his bushy curly hair.

“I’ll see you when I need some more reforming,” he said to Betsy and went out.