Small-town Christmas - by special request

We are in the middle of the annual Clothes in Books trope of Christmas in Books: seasonal scenes from random books, for no better reason than I like looking for the pictures, and I and some readers find them cheery and Xmas-y. This one was particularly requested by readers



Heaven to Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace


published 1945

 



[excerpt] The Ray house by this time was almost bursting with Christmas. Holly wreaths were up in all the windows. Mr Ray had brought home candy canes. Washington had a red and green bow on his collar. And everyone had been warned by everyone else not to look in this or that drawer, or this or that closet…

There was the usual Christmas Eve ritual. They decorated the tree. Betsy put on the golden harp from this year’s shopping expedition with Tacy. She hung the red ball she had bought last year, the angel from the year before.

The tree stood in the dining room, and its candlelight mingled with the soft light from the fire in the grate as Julia went to the piano and they all sang carols. Then they gathered round the fire and Betsy read from Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and Julia read the story of Jesus’ birth from the Book of Luke. Later they turned out the lights to fill one another’s stockings which were hung around the fireplace. They all forgot about the brass bowl…

 

comments: My lovely American readers recommended the Betsy-Tacy books, which aren’t, I think, at all well-known in the UK. They’ve been mentioned a few times, but particularly last Christmas on this post, from staunch blogfriends (Constance, CLM, backed up by Shay)– enough encouragement to make me order this particular book and promise a Christmas post on it for this year…

So first of all I had to realize that this is a whole series of books, called the Betsy-Tacy books, and that the one mentioned – Heaven to Betsy -  is quite a late entry. In the first book, Betsy is about to have her 5th birthday: in this one she is going in to High School. So they are books to grow up to, I guess, as the audience for the first one is going to be quite different from that for this one or the other High School stories. (I have now also caught up with some books from different points in the series.)

I dashed my way through my double volume, which also included Betsy in Spite of Herself. You can see why they were such successful books: the author based them on her own childhood, and on the stories she told her own children. Not a great deal happens: Betsy is part of a loving family in Minnesota around the turn of the 19/20th century. They live in a small town: Tacy’s house is opposite (though there is a move later). Refreshingly, they are fascinating, really really readable – but Betsy does not have huge problems in her life: she is not perfect but she is happy how she is. In this High School book, she is concerned to look good, pays a lot of attention to her hair and clothes and appearance, but it is all not a big deal, and she doesn’t over-emphasize either problems or succsses. Betsy is popular with both girls and boys: occasionally there are moments when everything doesn’t go well, but she is not dragged down by dreadful fears and disasters. She is interested in the fact that some of her friends are very keen to get married and settle down in the town, while she and others have different ambitions: ‘they planned to be writers, dancers, circus acrobats’. It’s all very relaxed.

The adventures are minor. There is a lot of description of outings and – always -  meals, and snacks. The family’s friends come round frequently, there are many informal parties, and singing round the piano.

I can only base my judgement on novels and memoirs, of course, but life sounds a lot more relaxed and fun than would have been the case in a small English town of the era – and this must hugely have been because of mixed/co-ed High Schools, which would have been almost unknown in the UK at that time. The casual social gatherings, the arch banter between boys and girls, the jokes about who has a crush on whom – it’s possible this wasn’t always as easy as Lovelace makes it sound, but it is charming and attractive. The young people go to a church youth group, Christian Endeavour, which sounds very modern in some ways. They talk to each other on the telephone the whole time, which I really do not think was true in the UK at that time.

There are endless Christmas celebrations, all with many guests and a lot of food. Betsy’s Mom announces that she wants a beautiful brass bowl for her Christmas present. But is Dad taking this seriously enough? It’s a tense story, and about as much jeopardy as ever arrives, but it is quite splendid.



“Julia, Betsy and Margaret were secretly a little worried about the brass bowl as Christmas drew near. Mrs Ray seemed so buoyantly satisfied that she was going to get it.” 

You’ll have to read it to find out what happens – no spoilers here.

Interestingly, her husband’s reason for not buying it is that he wants her to have something for herself, not for the house.

The setting and era of the book reminded me of the Judy Garland film Meet Me in St Louis.

Merry Christmas (Yuletide Revels) by William Glackens from the Brooklyn Museum.

This brass bowl, from the 14th century, is from the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Comments

  1. Thanks for highlighting! This series is one of my favorites. Here is more background on, and a photo of, Mrs Ray’s brass bowl https://betsytacysdeepvalley.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/stellas-christmas-wish/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What an excellent website - the love for these books is very charming.
      And I am delighted to see the real brass bowl, and love the mix of fact and fiction

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I forgot I had recommended these books so this was a delightful surprise! So glad you enjoyed it. I have held the original brass bowl that Maud Hart Lovelace's daughter inherited and it was a thrill after having read this chapter many times. When Borders bookstore enjoyed its brief time in the UK, I think I was still working with them as a sales rep and encouraged them to place some copies there but except for a few people I gave copies to the books are virtually unknown in Britain.

      Regarding telephones, Maud was recalling her childhood and kept diaries but might not be recalling accurately, as I agree it is unlikely they were prevalent. In Emily of Deep Valley, someone complains that Emily's family (which lives farther from town) does not have one. In A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons, which I read last summer and is set in 1923 London, the main character who is in her 20s and lives with a female friend (living on meager salaries) had either a telephone or a wireless in her flat, which seemed unlikely to me. Anachronism is why I am so wary of historical mysteries.

      Wishing you a Happy Christmas!

      Constance

      Delete
    2. I loved these books as a child, and they are among those that hold up to adult reading. W/r/t telephones, I think being in or out of town has a lot to do with whether people had one. Mankato (the real Deep Valley) was the county seat, so probably was more likely to have phones than outlying areas. Here's a link to a map of telephone connections in the US in 1910: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~200183~3000108:Lines-Of-The-Bell-Telephone-Compani?trs=242&sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&mi=124&qvq=q%3Abatch001%3Bsort%3APub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No%3Blc%3ARUMSEY~8~1 (sorry that link is such a mess! It shows Mankato south and slightly west of Minneapolis-St Paul). My grandmother was slightly younger than Betsy and her friends, and grew up on a farm in Iowa; she contrasted her farm life, and the long walk to a one-room school that covered grades 1-8, with the much easier and more fun lives of girls who lived in town and were able to attend high school.

      For pictures of phones from 1878 to 1928, scroll down to the picture in the Western Electric ad toward the end of this article: https://clickamericana.com/topics/discoveries-inventions/the-history-of-the-telephone-with-50-examples-of-old-phones

      Delete
    3. Constance: I'm glad I was able to surprise you!
      I suppose these books are the opposite of the What Katy Did books in having no traction in the UK - but given the popularity of Katy, and Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women, it seems surprising they've never taken off here. Maybe one day.
      I wasn't casting doubt on the telephones - just interested in the contrast. I remember being much struck by Sinlair Lewis's Main Street - pub 1920, set earlier - where someone is criticized for not having installed a telephone.
      Dame Eleanor: thanks for interesting pereptions and helpful links.
      Car ownership is another area where I think there would be a marked difference between UK and US history.

      Delete
  3. Oh, I read several Betsy-Tacy books as a child. This was a nice trip down memory lane, Moira. This series isn't as well known as some others, but I think it was a big part of lots of youths...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have very much enjoyed finding out about this aspect of US youth, Margot!

      Delete
  4. This is a perfect book for a Christmas in Books post. I have learned a lot about the Betsy-Tacy books from Constance at her blog, but I have not yet read one. I cannot think of any continuing children's book series that I read when I was young. Or later. But I should read some of the early Betsy-Tacy books soon.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I had never heard of the Betsy-Tacy books until the internet came along, well into my adulthood. When you mentioned telephone calls I instantly thought of Meet Me in St Louis, and the call from Warren Sheffield with its accompanying "drama"! I have the impression that society in general over here was more "relaxed" than in the Old World. Maybe because in the struggle of building a new nation in a relative wilderness, social distinctions were less important than survival skills? (I'm not claiming we're classless though! But

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hit Publish by mistake....I was trying to say that life was more rough-and-ready over here. ("Vulgar" to some . Check out Dickens' impressions of America!) Some colonies were established by people who disagreed with certain English ways, and wanted to build a different kind of society. And of course after independence, doing things the English way was rather frowned upon. We even created our own dictionary!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sure you're right that different physical surroundings had a big effect. As in other comments - rural isolation must have encouraged car and telephone ownership.

      As I'm always saying - in general detective stories are a very good guide to the minutiae of life . The plots are often outracgeous, but all the more reason for the background, domestic details to be authentic. So Agatha Christie very helpful on how many maids a family would have, and who had telephones and cars.

      Delete
    2. There was considerable difference in the ways of the staid and settled east (New England, the Atlantic seaboard) than the rough and new west, and Minnesota would have been considered part of the West until after the American Civil War. I'm wracking my brain to think of the title, but several years ago I read the memoirs of a young Virginia woman who went out to the Dakotas to marry a rancher, and the shock of her family upon learning that she made friends with a girl who (gasp) worked in a bookstore for her living, and had male guests for supper who sat down to dinner without their coats on.

      Delete
    3. A very good geographical point, which I was aware of without categorizing. In my case it's because, obv, of books where heroines can do anything, and others where they cannot.
      Where did Katy of What Katy Did live? I always found that hard to imagine.
      Whereas Little Women is so clearly New England.

      Delete

Post a Comment