retail emporia and the better workshops. A single lady, especially
an old maid, as she was getting to be, could not just stroll about uptown without calling
her sense of propriety, or her actual virtue, into doubt; nevertheless, a subtle reminder to
any unmarried or widowed and gainfully employed men, young or old, that a single lady
had certain personal and social advantages was not out of order.
The house was small and cramped, not the spacious doctor's establishment where
they had lived on Mackie Street, but an extremely modest appropriate-for-newlyweds
house on Cranmer Street. Lavinia had been through the wringer of local gossip upon the
occasion of the doctor's death, which, though it had been deemed understandable on the
whole, was a topic of considerable vitality, given the additional bad fortune of the deaths
of Ben and Lawrence. Lavinia was not ready to be batted about at local church suppers
and quilting bees any more than she had to be, yet a reclusive life would certainly invite
as much remark as a bold one. The key was to find a sociable but self-reliant middle
ground.
It was a beautiful spring. Margaret enjoyed the succession of blooming trees
planted everywhere--pussy willows followed by forsythia followed by dogwood followed
by redbud, cherry, peach, apple, hawthorn, and lilacs white and purple. Some trees were
fragrant, some merely foamingly rich and beautiful. She felt this unusual wealth of
blooming to be a promise regarding the new century. As an old maid, she should have
been sober and circumspect, but she didn't seem all that old to herself, not as old as
Beatrice, who was becoming plump and harried and now wore her hair like Lavinia.
Lavinia, of course, only had eyes for her new grandson, Lawrence, whom she considered
the spitting image of Ben. He looked like a Bell to Margaret, however. She understood
that Mrs. Bell agreed with her. Elizabeth confided that Mrs. Bell was disappointed in this
offspring, and had said to Elizabeth more than once that she "couldn't understand how the
Bell heritage proved so strong, considering that the Bells themselves are short and pale,
though sturdy enough." Both the Branscomb heritage (hers) and the Gentry-Mayfield
heritage had been overwhelmed--or "Perhaps the word is 'drowned'"--in the Bell heritage.
Elizabeth and Margaret laughed and laughed. "What every mother needs is a nice cradle,"
opined Mrs. Bell, "so that she may rock her child and appreciate him, but not have to
endure any suffocating personal contact." She supplied Beatrice not only with a beautiful
hand-carved family cradle, but also with a nurse. In other words, she occupied herself by
taking care of all of them according to her notions of kindness.
That summer, Mrs. Bell and Lavinia put their heads together and decided to do
the easiest thing first, which was to take Elizabeth in hand, since she was almost nineteen.
According to Mrs. Bell, there were plenty of up-and-coming young men in St. Louis,
who, if not involved in manufacturing, were associated with the May Company, or
perhaps the beer brewers, or were lawyers who had gone to school with the scions of
wealthy St. Louis families and would be useful in some business or other. By the end of
the summer, Elizabeth was betrothed to a man from New Jersey, a lawyer named Mercer
Hart, who had come to St. Louis to assume a position with Mr. Danforth's livestock-feed
company. Mrs. Danforth and Mrs. Bell belonged to a fashionable ladies' club, where once
a month they listened to speeches about humane improvements to the lives of the lower
orders, or other equally edifying topics. Margaret went along once. The speaker, a man
from Wisconsin, discussed interior ceiling heights and their effect on the mind's tendency
to think either in concrete particulars or in accordance with more transcendental spiritual
ideas. Another one, which Mrs. Bell reported over the supper table, concerned the
writings of Mr. Alfred
an old maid, as she was getting to be, could not just stroll about uptown without calling
her sense of propriety, or her actual virtue, into doubt; nevertheless, a subtle reminder to
any unmarried or widowed and gainfully employed men, young or old, that a single lady
had certain personal and social advantages was not out of order.
The house was small and cramped, not the spacious doctor's establishment where
they had lived on Mackie Street, but an extremely modest appropriate-for-newlyweds
house on Cranmer Street. Lavinia had been through the wringer of local gossip upon the
occasion of the doctor's death, which, though it had been deemed understandable on the
whole, was a topic of considerable vitality, given the additional bad fortune of the deaths
of Ben and Lawrence. Lavinia was not ready to be batted about at local church suppers
and quilting bees any more than she had to be, yet a reclusive life would certainly invite
as much remark as a bold one. The key was to find a sociable but self-reliant middle
ground.
It was a beautiful spring. Margaret enjoyed the succession of blooming trees
planted everywhere--pussy willows followed by forsythia followed by dogwood followed
by redbud, cherry, peach, apple, hawthorn, and lilacs white and purple. Some trees were
fragrant, some merely foamingly rich and beautiful. She felt this unusual wealth of
blooming to be a promise regarding the new century. As an old maid, she should have
been sober and circumspect, but she didn't seem all that old to herself, not as old as
Beatrice, who was becoming plump and harried and now wore her hair like Lavinia.
Lavinia, of course, only had eyes for her new grandson, Lawrence, whom she considered
the spitting image of Ben. He looked like a Bell to Margaret, however. She understood
that Mrs. Bell agreed with her. Elizabeth confided that Mrs. Bell was disappointed in this
offspring, and had said to Elizabeth more than once that she "couldn't understand how the
Bell heritage proved so strong, considering that the Bells themselves are short and pale,
though sturdy enough." Both the Branscomb heritage (hers) and the Gentry-Mayfield
heritage had been overwhelmed--or "Perhaps the word is 'drowned'"--in the Bell heritage.
Elizabeth and Margaret laughed and laughed. "What every mother needs is a nice cradle,"
opined Mrs. Bell, "so that she may rock her child and appreciate him, but not have to
endure any suffocating personal contact." She supplied Beatrice not only with a beautiful
hand-carved family cradle, but also with a nurse. In other words, she occupied herself by
taking care of all of them according to her notions of kindness.
That summer, Mrs. Bell and Lavinia put their heads together and decided to do
the easiest thing first, which was to take Elizabeth in hand, since she was almost nineteen.
According to Mrs. Bell, there were plenty of up-and-coming young men in St. Louis,
who, if not involved in manufacturing, were associated with the May Company, or
perhaps the beer brewers, or were lawyers who had gone to school with the scions of
wealthy St. Louis families and would be useful in some business or other. By the end of
the summer, Elizabeth was betrothed to a man from New Jersey, a lawyer named Mercer
Hart, who had come to St. Louis to assume a position with Mr. Danforth's livestock-feed
company. Mrs. Danforth and Mrs. Bell belonged to a fashionable ladies' club, where once
a month they listened to speeches about humane improvements to the lives of the lower
orders, or other equally edifying topics. Margaret went along once. The speaker, a man
from Wisconsin, discussed interior ceiling heights and their effect on the mind's tendency
to think either in concrete particulars or in accordance with more transcendental spiritual
ideas. Another one, which Mrs. Bell reported over the supper table, concerned the
writings of Mr. Alfred
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