Miss Flora Nelson, a redheaded lady who was known to be highly educated and could carry on talk of books and current affairs with whoever wished it, could be seen hustling along, bent over; her thoughts got there before she did.
Miss Recie Gee, of one of the richer families, had a built-in chauffeur, one of her sons, to drive her places. In the South, married or not, a lady can be Miss Something all her life.
Miss Edith Erskine (another real “Miss”) never went out at all, that I can remember. She lived up on a hill in an old house, again furnished, as I was to learn, with beautiful things. Her means of visiting was the telephone. She was the town’s one and only Roman Catholic.
During the summer revival meetings, when people got filled up with religion and were enjoined by some visiting Bible-pounder to “bring someone to Christ,” thoughts turned to Miss Edith. Miss Edith was ready for them. She told them on the telephone that she took her orders from the pope (just what they were expecting to hear) and that the pope himself had been on the phone to her that very morning. The pope had told her she could play cards—it was not a sin—and that she could also have a glass of sherry and smoke cigarettes.
Thus did she conquer. I suppose whoever had called her may have resolved to pray fervently for her salvation, but she may have scared them off even that. A small, thin, upright lady, Miss Edith wore her head in a silk scarf, wound round like a turban. Her sister drove over from Greenwood, a large town nearby, to take her to Sunday mass.
Miss Edith decided one day to give a children’s party. I believe this occurred before I started to school, but I am not sure. The memory has a “before school” feeling to it—that is to say, it is one of those timeless ones. For to me, Miss Edith Erskine will always be there. Through all the ages she will go on talking amiably on the phone to the few she favors, dismissing those she does not, deciding on one day, though not on others, that she will give a children’s party.
I remember being dressed to go. I always had a party dress. It usually had some fancy touches, a ruffle, smocking, a lace collar. I was expected to wear patent-leather shoes with a cross-strap that buttoned, and white socks. I would be reminded to speak to Miss Edith about how nice everything was, and to eat whatever was offered.
Miss Edith did well. She had decorated with crepe-paper streamers and had looked up some games she had us play. They were mainly quiet games, such as turning children into animals and asking them to act out what they were. A pony would trot around the room, a dog would bark, a cat would mew, a lion would roar.
Another game was called Go In and Out the Window. We always played this at children’s parties, but I have never found anyone outside Carrollton who has heard of it. You form two circles, boys in one, girls in the other. One must move to the right, the other to the left. Clasping one hand after another you begin to sing, weaving in and out. “Go in and out the window,” you sing, then some words I forget, but always ending, “For we have gained the day.” Stop! Does some adult drop a handkerchief? One child is always left without a hand to catch. A single ring forms. The left-out child must stand in the middle and the song changes. A boy must go to a girl (or vice versa) and kneel. “I kneel because I love you” goes the next, followed by “I measure my love to show you,” arms extending wide as a tape measure, “for we have gained the day.” These two drop out and the round begins once more.
In repeating familiar phrases I never stopped to question their meaning. So I learned dozens of Bible verses in Sunday school without any notion of what they were saying. To me the sound of words, like those in this chant, was what the words were about. I think now that this game must relate to some courtly dance or ritual come down from long-ago days. Later on, when I came to memorize poems, I loved their sound so much I hardly thought of what the words meant.
That day at Miss Edith’s, when the games were done, we were led into her dining room, where we had some sort of punch in small glass cups and were allowed to cut a cake. There were cookies, too, and we all said what we were supposed to at the door and walked out down the long front walk between the cedars. Other trees enclosed that property high on its hillside corner and masked the house from being seen by any but those who climbed up from the street to go there.
The hill is still there, and though the house either burned down or was demolished years ago and another, new house now stands on the property, itself hidden by its high position on the hill and by trees, I still persist in thinking of Miss Edith and her house as right where they always were, and will remain. Where Carrollton is concerned, it seems a desecration to recognize that time exists at all.
What Carrollton ladies lived on, many of them, like Miss Edith, from fine old families, some of them widows or unmarried ladies, was often a mystery. It is to be supposed that most everyone was not as well-off as they would have liked to be. They had manners and a standard of behavior that suggested they should never give a thought to money. Discussing it was not approved of. “Po’-mouthin”’ was downright common.
Many had “places” in the Delta. The hill towns were older than the Delta ones. Except for river towns like Greenville and Yazoo City, the Delta through the ages had held little but swamps, mud, mosquitoes, moccasins, and alligators. Cleared land there was incredibly productive, but who would want to live on it? Better to buy it up, hire it out to an overseer, let black labor plow it, plant it, and harvest it, and take the annual proceeds. “He’s over at the place” was as familiar a phrase, almost, as “He’s gone fishing.”
Whether they had money or not, the ladies of Carrollton maintained a way of life. I think of huge old bathtubs with ball-and-claw feet, of multiple petticoats, silver dresser sets, talcum powder, and afternoon naps. Recipes and ladies’ auxiliary meetings. Dictums and preferences. “I would never walk by the barbershop; no telling what those men might say.” “Don’t go in Tardy’s store in the morning or in Herbert’s in the afternoon— the sun shines right through your slip.” “Always speak. Even if you don’t know them, you must always speak.” “Don’t ever laugh at country manners. You might hurt somebody’s feelings.” “Remember who you are. People will criticize your behavior. It will reflect on your home.” “Don’t scratch. Even if you’re sitting barelegged on Miss Beaurie’s horsehair chair, don’t scratch… . And don’t bite your fingernails, either.”
It all seemed gentle and soft, loving and tolerant, but it was as rigidly bounded as a high-security prison, guards on the watch-towers, dogs trained for hot pursuit. Manners and behavior, what one wore and did not wear, what talk was allowed and what was never to be mentioned (though everybody knew it). Gossip and confidences. I was warned against “talking out.” Whatever I said would be repeated; a secret might get loose, or worse, an attitude toward a secret might not be the accepted one, and might suggest that our family was in some way “out of line.”
Of course, even among the ladies there were the rule breakers. Gossip sprouted up around them like weeds. They pretended to be all they were supposed to be, and everyone pretended that this was indeed true. So a state of what was pretended by everyone gradually took over, and the hidden life marched right along its way as the life of expected propriety spread over it, like the caterpillar ride at the county fair.
Among the more fabulous old ladies of Mississippi, Mrs. Lizzie George Henderson ranks high. She actually lived in Greenwood, but had inherited Cotesworth, the home of her father, Senator J. Z. George. This beautiful home, in all its white-columned classical simplicity, is set just outside North Carrollton, on rolling farmland.
Between Carrollton in the hills and Greenwood in the flat Delta comes Valley Hill, a wonderfully steep drop from hills to Delta, a correspondingly steep climb from Delta to hills.
Miss Lizzie George had an electric car.
I saw her once gliding around in this thing. I was in Greenwood with my mother and my aunt, who had doubtless gone over to shop at Fountain’s (“Big Busy Store”) and must have had some business, too, around at Whittington’s (dry go
ods), for I remember she was passing down Main Street near the Leflore County Court House. She was sitting up straight and wearing a hat with a veil tightly drawn down under her chin, and my aunt said, “It’s Miss Lizzie George Henderson in her electric car,” and my mother said, “Don’t stare.”
Staring is not a good thing—I was always being warned against it—but how was one not to? When I hear of the “horseless carriage,” I think of the vision I had that day (I think I did well to stare, for I never had it again); I do not think of country carriages, obsolete but in my childhood still around, stuck away in the barns of relatives, with the stuffing coming out of the cushions and the glass broken out of the lamps, which we used to play in by the hour with the Negro children, crying “Giddy-up” and “Gee” and “Haw” to our hearts’ content, and never going anywhere.
No, indeed; I think of Louis XVI, had Franklin or Jefferson or somebody visiting the court devised a motor for him on a dull afternoon when wearied of piquet and high diplomacy and all those ladies, and how, having had the royal coach brought round and the horses sent back to the stables, they might have hooked it all up and then advised, “Why don’t you just try it out around town?” Versailles is a flat town too.
The lady herself was remarkable; if not royal, she would do until the real thing came along. She was just sitting there, being borne along at a decorous, silent rate, her back straight as a plumb line, not noticing anyone (though if she by any chance did look your way, you’d better speak, and quick); she touched no visible control (or so in memory it now seems).
And she was famous. She owned a huge Victorian house in Greenwood. It was carefully shuttered, with a butler and others engaged in intricate service. She had the whole of it painted mustard yellow, and as if that weren’t enough, what with the electric car, to produce a state of marveling and bemusement in Greenwood, which has not to this day gone away, she also had a carillon installed in the courthouse and gave it to the city. For years you could be reminded of her by the chimes, which rang every fifteen minutes. (They recently broke down, but are being repaired.)
She came out to Cotesworth and caused a Spanish walk, in variegated colors, to be run the long way up from the drive, right to the pure white facade. But she did not come out in that car. She tried. But I don’t think she succeeded. The story has it that she got halfway up Valley Hill and then couldn’t make it. The royal coach did not have the power for that relentless climb, and Mrs. Henderson in her electric car passing through the courthouse square is one vision at least that Carrollton missed. Dommage!
I do not really think we should dwell on how she felt, this handsome and imperious woman, so much the mistress of all she surveyed, when she stalled on Valley Hill, and stalled, and stalled again. There are moments of defeat too painful to consider.
Of course, she had her long car back in Greenwood and her chauffeur—maybe even two or three cars and chauffeurs—but that’s not the point. It was not a practical matter, after all. And the weather was probably hot, and there were all those petticoats, those stockings, those layers of various embroideries, and the long sleeves and the mitts, and the face powder and the hat and the veil. For we do know she would never have ridden through our little hill town without being flawlessly dressed. Ladies of her sort measured up to an excessively high standard, which they themselves had set; and any defeat they encountered was, as it should have been, a matter of terrain.
10
FIELD OF BATTLE
MISSISSIPPI, summer of 1861. There was excited talk in the parlor. The Confederacy had won a great battle against the Federal forces at Manassas, presaging general victory and an early end to the hostilities. General Beauregard was mentioned so often as leader and hero that a little girl who was crawling about on the floor got to her feet and stood firmly before the company. “My name is Beauregard,” she said, and from then on would never answer to any other name.
I wonder what people in Carrollton, Mississippi, find to talk about now that just about everybody who remembers Miss Beauregard Somerville has passed away. She herself died many years ago, during the thirties, but that in no way stopped her being spoken of as a living presence.
On the rainy winter evening when we got the news of her death, my father “went up there.” She lived only a short distance from us, up the street that led to our house, past the school campus. The house still stands, its construction definitely in the grander post-Civil War manner, gables on the roof and bay window in the facade, a wraparound front porch, stained-glass windows. A long concrete walk ran up to sheltered front-porch steps. The steps from the street were imposing beyond the ordinary, flanked with scrolled cement, like banisters. Elephant ears were always growing in the round plot in the front yard. They spread out their great green fronds, where raindrops would linger, large and white as pearls. You walked softly as you entered the house, minding your manners. You would be judged if you did not.
She was not a “Miss” any more than her name was Beauregard. Beauregard was soon shortened to Beaurie and the Miss attached early on, I can only imagine.
Miss Beaurie was my grandmother McCain’s best friend, and when my grandmother died, Miss Beaurie lived on as a supervisory spirit to my mother and, by extension, also to us. She dispensed the authority of her approval or disapproval to any number she judged worthy of notice: approval was assumed, thus infrequently mentioned; disapproval was dreaded, and was often called into play. The times were changing; danger was everywhere.
Miss Beaurie was the custodian of manners. She couldn’t have invented them herself, so she must have got them from those before her who knew best. Wherever the rules came from, the families she accepted had to obey them. All their children and kin came under her surveyance, and were fair game for comment. Was a girl seen uptown without stockings? “I must speak to Nora,” she would say. “Augusta must not go uptown looking like that.” She never wished to hear about a lady smoking, but if she did, watch out! Drinking for any woman lay beyond the pale: banishment was the only result possible.
My mother related how, as a girl herself, she was once afflicted with persistent hiccups, which went on without stopping for two whole days and nights. The family tried every known remedy: dropping a cold key down her back, sudden scares, having her swallow down a glass of water while holding her breath. My grandmother was about to call the family doctor, but was inspired to say to my mother: “Beaurie told me what you did.” The hiccups stopped instantly.
Did some girl begin to go out with a young man “not of good family” ? The telephone call would come; the mother or aunt or both would be summoned. Miss Beaurie served tea to her visitors, I believe, or maybe coffee, teacakes as well. I don’t remember vividly, perhaps because I never liked going there.
The house did make an impression. It was lined with wood panels and rich wallpapers. The carpeted stairs ran up from an entrance hall into a mysterious upper floor I was never asked to explore. The dining room was on the right, to the left the parlor. This was the best room, I suppose, as there were open windows, and more light coming in.
The lady herself sat in her long black skirts, summer and winter, with her high lace collar and her fan. Long widowed—I never heard very much about Mr. Somerville, whoever he had dared to be—and childless, she knew better than anything else exactly how to be Miss Beauregard Somerville.
My mother always dressed me carefully for these visits. I had to wear my black patent-leather shoes with the strap that buttoned, my white socks. My dress had to be clean, pressed, starched in summer, and never too short. (The Keenan girls wore short dresses; you could see their panties; I expect their mother got her reprimand.) My proper dresses, however, were never long enough to come between my bare legs and the horsehair upholstery on the straight-backed chair. I would sit, sternly forbidden to scratch, and wonder how long before we could leave. My feet dangled down with nothing to rest on.
I don’t remember Miss Beaurie’s face as well as I wish I could. Long, vertical wrinkles, a p
ursed mouth, and gray-black hair with curls across the brow, features whitened with rice powder. Feet in neat black laced-up shoes, small crooked hands. The high lace collar. The cameo. A stream of talk directed at my mother, who always supplied the right answers, the appropriate questions, the expected nods.
Although my mother all her life professed the deepest admiration and devotion to Miss Beaurie, I do wonder how much of all this was what she thought she ought to feel. I remember that when we finally paid our respects and left—walking decorously down the front walk to the steps, turning at the obligatory place to wave goodbye up to where she would be at the door, ready at a precise moment to return inside—once freed, once out of sight, my mother, a young woman herself back then, might begin to sing or skip and talk in a carefree way, holding my hand as we went along down the sidewalk back home, and laughing at one thing or another. Once by some unaccountable chance we found two kittens by the sidewalk, no houses near. She picked them up mewing, put one in each pocket of her coat and took them home. One died (I smothered it, I think, with affection), but the other lived.
Miss Beaurie had a car and a chauffeur. She made long trips to Memphis to shop. These took place, I believe, twice a year, and only a chosen one or two of the ladies she regarded highly were asked to go along. I remember the car well, for Miss Beaurie was what is known in Mississippi as a “big Presbyterian,” and for church functions I was sometimes allowed to be driven in it, along with my mother. “We’ll just drive up to the church together” was what she said by telephone. I don’t quite recall why we had to go with her. We, too, had a car, though you could never be sure something wouldn’t go wrong with it. It had to be started from the outside with a hand crank and sometimes would not turn over.
Landscapes of the Heart Page 8