do.
So it came as a blow but also as an opportunity when Frances told her one day in Janeâs senior year that she was going back to Chicago to teach at the Parker School, and that if Jane would like to come along and get some training there, it might be arranged.
All the charming, seductive things about college life were still there, but as the war dragged on and became more terrible, the young men with whom Jane had danced were volunteering for the Canadian army or, as Maurice had done, for the ambulance corps. France, greatly beloved, became almost as dear as the United States, and the students sang the âMarseillaiseâ on their way to classes. Lucy and Anne dreamed of getting over somehow as soon as they graduated. Like everyone else, they knitted socks and sweaters and rolled bandages in their spare time.
As I ponder the very little I know about those years two images stand out above all others. The first I found out quite by accident, and it was illuminating. On my way to the island I had stopped to see a former classmate of Janeâs to deliver a present to her from a mutual friend, and thought Jane would be happy to hear what Jewel was like now that they were each in their seventies. I learned then that Jane had never forgotten and would never forgive a practical joke played on her by Jewel a few days after she arrived at Vassar, terrified, homesick, and taking comfort in a family of Brownies, small plump figures covered in silk, which were her fetishes at that time. When she came back to her room after supper, the Brownies had disappeared, stolen . There was anger in her eyes when she told me this story fifty years later, and it was clear that Jewel would never be forgivenâalthough she did return the beloved Brownies a few days later. It has stuck in my mind because it is an example of the child who never died in Jane and also of the intensity of her feelings. The Brownies were still kept on her bureau at the island. And it was of course that child who came to life whenever Jane was with children, even into very old age. Though the unforgiving anger took me by surprise.
The other image which not only Jane herself but several of her friends always mentioned when the Vassar days were referred to was, I imagine, the greatest experience of all. Far more important than her being class president or getting an A on her final paper from Frances Thompson. She was chosen to play Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac . Those who saw this performance never forgot itââShe was simply great,â they all agreed. Here her innate romanticism had full play in a role which she took into herself and made her own, that part of her that would have liked to be a man, swashbuckling, in love with language, with an irresistible power to woo ⦠but doomed to failure because of an immense nose. In that role she could literally play out every romantic dream, every secret desire. And how she would have hated to have to play Roxane!
When I referred to the notes I made immediately after the funeral I found the phrase âShe was never virginal,â and I suppose what I meant was that she did not resemble anyoneâs idea of a spinster, dried up, afraid of life, locked away. On the contrary it may have been her riches as a personality, her openness, the depth of her feelings that made her what she was, not quite the marrying kind ⦠a free spirit.
She was intensely romantic but it occurred to me that she had almost nothing of the narcissistic young woman whose romanticism has at least something to do with being admired. Jane wanted to admire, not so much to be admired, and she wanted to throw herself into some heroic act or life, as a follower, not a leader. The need to dominate which one sees rather often in powerful women was not in her.
Outside the college itself and all the life there and in the summers on the island, World War One created a highly emotional climate. Young men came to say good-bye, among
So it came as a blow but also as an opportunity when Frances told her one day in Janeâs senior year that she was going back to Chicago to teach at the Parker School, and that if Jane would like to come along and get some training there, it might be arranged.
All the charming, seductive things about college life were still there, but as the war dragged on and became more terrible, the young men with whom Jane had danced were volunteering for the Canadian army or, as Maurice had done, for the ambulance corps. France, greatly beloved, became almost as dear as the United States, and the students sang the âMarseillaiseâ on their way to classes. Lucy and Anne dreamed of getting over somehow as soon as they graduated. Like everyone else, they knitted socks and sweaters and rolled bandages in their spare time.
As I ponder the very little I know about those years two images stand out above all others. The first I found out quite by accident, and it was illuminating. On my way to the island I had stopped to see a former classmate of Janeâs to deliver a present to her from a mutual friend, and thought Jane would be happy to hear what Jewel was like now that they were each in their seventies. I learned then that Jane had never forgotten and would never forgive a practical joke played on her by Jewel a few days after she arrived at Vassar, terrified, homesick, and taking comfort in a family of Brownies, small plump figures covered in silk, which were her fetishes at that time. When she came back to her room after supper, the Brownies had disappeared, stolen . There was anger in her eyes when she told me this story fifty years later, and it was clear that Jewel would never be forgivenâalthough she did return the beloved Brownies a few days later. It has stuck in my mind because it is an example of the child who never died in Jane and also of the intensity of her feelings. The Brownies were still kept on her bureau at the island. And it was of course that child who came to life whenever Jane was with children, even into very old age. Though the unforgiving anger took me by surprise.
The other image which not only Jane herself but several of her friends always mentioned when the Vassar days were referred to was, I imagine, the greatest experience of all. Far more important than her being class president or getting an A on her final paper from Frances Thompson. She was chosen to play Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac . Those who saw this performance never forgot itââShe was simply great,â they all agreed. Here her innate romanticism had full play in a role which she took into herself and made her own, that part of her that would have liked to be a man, swashbuckling, in love with language, with an irresistible power to woo ⦠but doomed to failure because of an immense nose. In that role she could literally play out every romantic dream, every secret desire. And how she would have hated to have to play Roxane!
When I referred to the notes I made immediately after the funeral I found the phrase âShe was never virginal,â and I suppose what I meant was that she did not resemble anyoneâs idea of a spinster, dried up, afraid of life, locked away. On the contrary it may have been her riches as a personality, her openness, the depth of her feelings that made her what she was, not quite the marrying kind ⦠a free spirit.
She was intensely romantic but it occurred to me that she had almost nothing of the narcissistic young woman whose romanticism has at least something to do with being admired. Jane wanted to admire, not so much to be admired, and she wanted to throw herself into some heroic act or life, as a follower, not a leader. The need to dominate which one sees rather often in powerful women was not in her.
Outside the college itself and all the life there and in the summers on the island, World War One created a highly emotional climate. Young men came to say good-bye, among
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