The Young Women of Tippah: A Sketch of Twenty-Five Years Ago
WHEN I read Virgil, at school, one phrase — a mere two words — fixed itself in my mind with such emphasis that I have never forgotten it. What immeasurable pathos lies in the simple statement, Troia fuit. All the thousands of lines I had to construe and translate could add nothing to the completeness of the idea that Troy was a thing of the past. So it is with Tippah. Not that it was destroyed by fire and sword; still less is it a deserted village. Geographically, it is still in existence, and would be described by its present inhabitants as a flourishing little city in northern Mississippi, on two railroads, with a population of nearly three thousand white people. Nevertheless, I maintain, Tippah fuit. Tippah, with its endearing charm, Tippah, often absurd but always fascinating, is as dead as many-towered Ilium itself.
Electric lights, water-works, the long-distance telephone, daily papers from three cities arriving the same morning that they are printed, landscape-gardening, a woman’s club, — these and other manifestations of modern life have relentlessly destroyed the heart and soul of Tippah. The glory is departed.
There is no need, however, to dwell on the Tippah of to-day. It is on Tippah of twenty-five years ago that the mind lingers fondly; it is of the old Tippah that I purpose to speak, forgetting henceforth that such a place as the present one is in existence.
In the old days, Birth, Marriage, Death, the three supreme experiences of the earthly pilgrimage, were the occasion of drawing together, not merely friends, but the whole village, in loving ministration. In thorough and literal fashion, everyone in Tippah obeyed the Scriptural injunction to rejoice with them that rejoiced and to weep with them that mourned. Mutual service was taken for granted; there was no more embarrassment felt in accepting it, on the one hand, than there was reluctance in offering it, on the other. While there was never any sense of obligation, there was a drawing together of hearts, in these solemn crises, that offset, and often in great measure prevented, the petty quarrels and jealousies which the narrowness of village life is supposed to engender. Mrs. Ambler could never have a ‘falling out’ with her neighbour, Mrs. Dudley, because she could never forget ‘how good Mrs. Dudley was when Johnny was born’; Mrs. Carter had mixed so much goodwill into all the wedding-cakes she had made, that she loved every young matron in Tippah; while Mr. Bob Jennings was the friend of every family in the village because, for fifteen years, whenever there had been a death, he had assisted in what are euphemistically termed the ‘last sad offices.’
It is all changed. Birth, Marriage, Death — eloquent and mighty pictures these words evoke — no longer call forth ever-ready Help from friends knit together as one family. A telephone-call to the nearest city, and in a few hours there is the trained nurse, the caterer, or the undertaker, as the case may be. Tippah is independent. It has lost alike the grace of receiving and the blessedness of giving.
Every stranger who has ever visited Tippah has at one t ime or another been refreshed by this ingenuous remark, made by one of the natives: ‘Oh, of course our little town is n’t very attractive in itself. The nicest thing about Tippah is the ’people, you know.’ Of Tippah in general, enough has been said; let us seek a better acquaintance with ‘the people.’
In Tippah, a young woman, her school-days over, is never formally presented to society; there is no comingout tea, or debutantes’ ball. She looks forward with no special enthusiasm to the Dance in Honor of the Graduates, as it is called on the printed programme, given every June by the young men of t he village; she has often been to such dances while still a school-girl. Some prestige, indeed, is conferred by being one of the graduates herself; and if she be chosen to lead the Grand March with which the ball opens, her heart may beat a trifle faster as she realizes that never again, until she is a bride, will she be the chief figure in her little world, the admired of all admirers.
The question of chaperonage is not a serious one in this village, where everybody knows everybody,’ and where Continental traditions are not in force, — as in New Orleans, for instance. A girl goes riding or driving, goes to a dance or to an ‘entertainment at the Hall,’ with a man or boy of her acquaintance, or receives a masculine visitor, untroubled by the conventional ruling that her mother should be with her on such occasions. There is no theatre, and the ‘entertainments’ just mentioned at Masonic Hall are generally amateur performances for the benefit of the Soldiers’ Monument Fund, or of one of the churches. Masonic Hall boasts a stage and three changes of scenery, exhibiting a grove, with seats under the trees, the interior of a castle, and a room in an humble cottage. Almost all possible situations in life can be made to fit into one or another of these settings. Plays, concerts, school-commencements, minstrel-shows, — such are some of the attractions offered, and there is never an empty seat.
A girl never dreams of going to these performances with her parents. It is the custom for the young men to ‘carry’ the girls to entertainments, or to dances, and if there are not enough young men to go round, owing to an exodus to Memphis on ‘job-hunting’ expeditions, the girl who is left out stays at home — with a splitting headache, of course — rather than advertise to the world that she has no beau. On more important and formal occasions, such as a Ball, some young man — probably the same one who has taken the responsibility of engaging the Hall, hiring the musicians, and shaving the candles with which to wax the floor — makes out a list of all the girls in town, and takes it around among his friends, each of whom writes his name opposite hers whose escort he wishes to be. It may be imagined that there is a scramble to be the first, or among the first, to get hold of the list, but those who come late accept what is left with a good grace, and within a few hours after the passing around of the list, every girl in Tippah receives a note in which the pleasure of her company for the dance is solicited in formal and respectful terms.
Easy and unrestrained as is the intercourse of young men and maidens, certain rules are inflexible. A young man speaks of an unmarried woman as a ‘ young lady,’ never as a ‘girl ’; and he addresses her as Miss Sally, Miss Anne, or Miss Betty; never, even if they are engaged, as Sally, or Anne, or Betty. On the other hand, a girl calls Tom, Dick, and Harry by their Christian names, without prefix, and designates them collectively, ‘the boys.’
The formal dances of which I have spoken, with music from Memphis, are rare and momentous occasions; but it often happens that after a Show — this convenient word is given with equal propriety to every form of entertainment at the Hall, from She Stoops to Conquer to a piano recital — the chairs are pushed back and the ever-obliging Mrs. Vernon plays waltzes and twosteps on the piano while the young folks dance, Mrs. Carter willingly sharing with her the duty of chaperone. Dancing after the Show is the rule, unless the entertainment be on behalf of the Presbyterian or Methodist church. These denominations frown upon this form of amusement, and in Tippah, at least, they are true to their convictions. Children of Methodist and Presbyterian parents dance, and are excused on the ground that they have not yet ‘joined the church.’ As a rule, they put off this important step until after they are married, when the temptation to dance is very slight.
Let us suppose we have just assisted at an entertainment under the auspices of the Roman Catholics or the Episcopalians, in which case there is no let or hindrance to the pastime of dancing. The curtain falls; the applause is drowned in the noise of pulling back the chairs; the older people hurry home. Soon Mrs. Vernon’s good-natured and nimble fingers are hammering away, in perfect time, on ‘The Beautiful Blue Danube,’ or ‘After the Ball’; young men and maidens float off in a waltz as naturally as a fish swims in his native element. We will linger a moment near Mrs. Carter, playing propriety against the wall.
This vivacious lady, forty years old, the mother of nine children, has the brightest eyes, the gayest laugh, and the longest widow’s veil in Tippah. Since her husband’s death, from the Fever, six years before, she has always worn the deepest mourning, but a life of seclusion seemed undesirable and inexpedient for more than a short twelvemonth. She goes everywhere — to all the entertainments, dances, baseball games, Woman’s Auxiliary meetings; to church every time the bell rings; even to the Philharmonic Society, though she is careful to explain that she’s not a bit literary. Irreverent boys of Tippah say that a dog-fight can’t begin until Mrs. Carter gets there. She makes all the clothes worn by herself and her nine children, except the boys’ suits after the boys are ten years old; she raises flowers and vegetables that would make a county fair blush for shame; she is an incessant talker, and a notable cook. When called upon to contribute a cake, a salad, or a bucket of lye-hominy for a church supper, she never makes an excuse; she always has time for everything. And yet there are benighted beings who say that Southern women are lazy and shiftless!
Between Mrs. Carter and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Sally, the tie is close and tender. They understand each other perfectly, these two. Mrs. Carter says frankly that she would never have owned Sally for her child if she had n’t been a flirt. She herself, it must be remembered, has a recordbreaking history. As the irresistible Susan Page of antebellum days she was acknowledged ‘the greatest beauty in three States,’ and it is whispered to this day in Tippah that when the War broke out five young men marched off with their regiment, each believing that as soon as he came back on a furlough he would marry the bewitching black-eyed Susan.
Sally tells her mother everything. Many a night after a ball Mrs. Carter sits on Sally’s bed until breakfast-time, listening with breathless interest to her daughter’s faithful report of how ma ny times she danced with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and what they had said, and with what skill she had ‘fenced ’ if they became too ardent or insistent.
‘Oh, Mother,’ Sally says, ‘there was the nicest boy from Senatobia there to-night — did you see him? — Mr. Trenholm, but he asked me to call him Charley.’
‘ Yes, I saw him,’ is the prompt reply, ‘and he’s as ugly as home-made sin.’
‘Well, he is ugly,’ Sally drawls, ‘but he’s so fascinating, and he gave me a big rush — hardly looked at another girl there. I believe I’m really in love this time.’
‘Are you, sure enough, Sally?’ exclaims her mother with enthusiasm. ‘Well, all right — only don’t let him find it out. The worse you treat him the more he will think of you.’
In the matter of engagements Mrs. Carter’s convictions are those that obtain throughout the South, and are not peculiar to her or to Tippah. Engagements are not announced, and sometimes a girl is engaged several times in succession, or, for that matter, several times at once. An engagement is not a life-mortgage, and the privileges accorded to affianced couples in places north of Mason and Dixon’s Line are unknown in Tippah. ‘ Gracious mercy! ’ Sally would say to Lucy, ‘I’d hate to think I’d been kissed by every man I was ever engaged to, would n’t you?’
Mrs. Carter’s methods of chaperonage for evening visits are picturesque. Sally receives her callers — or rather caller, for there must be only one at a time — on the front porch. It is summer nearly all the time in Tippah. Her mother, as we shall presently see, is heard but not seen — reversing the nursery precept. Custom decrees that a young man shall write and make an appointment with the young woman with whom he wishes to spend the evening. There is little effort at variety of expression in these notes; out of a hundred such effusions ninety-nine would be worded in this way: —
‘DEAR MISS SALLY,— If you have no engagement for tonight, may I have the pleasure of calling on you? Yours ever, JOHN.’
It may be necessary to say that in the South ‘evening’ is from noon until sunset; ‘night,’ from sunset until bedtime. ‘Afternoon’ is not in a Southerner’s vocabulary.
John gives a darkey a dime to deliver this note, and if he wishes to be facetious he puts S. B. A. N. in the corner, which being interpreted signifies Sent By A Nigger. Miss Sally receives it, and perhaps waits an hour or so before answering; the darkey in the meantime, who has done his day’s work and been paid for it, lounges on the kitchen steps, where the cook, fat old Aunt Charity, feeds him, and scolds him for getting in her way, or coaxes him to draw her a bucket of water, or to fetch some wood for the stove. At last Sally, if she has had no message from some one she would rather see, sends a gracious permission to John, who appears on the porch at the stroke of eight. It is perfectly dark, except for the stream of light from the ever-open front door; Mrs. Carter’s door is never closed, summer or winter, day or night. They sit down and begin to talk of the one subject on earth — themselves. Mrs. Carter, as I said, is never at anytime visible. She is undoubtedly inside somewhere, cutting up watermelon rind for preserves, or darning the immense holes in little Nick’s stockings, or sewing lace around the neck of Sally’s pretty party-dress. At nine o’clock she probably goes upstairs for the night, to her own bedroom. But woe betide the reckless youth who thinks he can take advantage of the absence of the maternal eye to coax Miss Sally to let him hold her hand, or sit with her in the hammock. From regions above, Mrs. Carter’s piercing notes ring out: ‘You John Dabney! quit that foolishness! ’ And John, abashed, murmurs an apology. At eleven o’clock the Voice comes on the stage again. ‘Eleven o’clock, Sally,’ is all it says; but the words, though addressed to Sally, are meant to produce an effect on John, and they do. Five minutes later, John is on his way home, and Sally is in her mother’s room, having her dress unpinned in the back (Mrs. Carter never has time to put buttons and buttonholes in Sally’s frocks) and telling ‘all about it.’
There is a story that once an impudent boy answered the usual hint by calling back, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Carter. Please let me know when it’s twelve.’ Be this as it may, the most unprincipled gossip in Tippah could never assert that Sally Carter had been seen on the porch after eleven o’clock.
All this time we have left the young people dancing at the Hall. The townclock strikes twelve; it is Saturday night, and to dance on Sunday would be a sin without precedent in Tippah. Mrs. Vernon plays the ‘Home Sweet Home’ waltz more and more slowly, until it dies away, pianissimo; the girls hurry into their light wraps, and happy young voices call out laughing goodnights.