“LA BELLE HÉLÈNE”
Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, Rhinebeck-on-Hudson
Baltimore, October 20th.
MY DEAREST ALMA: As we have been confiding our joys and woes to each other for the last twenty-five years, it is to you I naturally write about this new trial which has come into my life. You will probably think it peu de chose, but I assure you, my dear, that if you really and truly put yourself in my place you will realize that it is an annoyance. Henry’s child has at last written to me that she “has finished her studies for the present” (!) and is coming to America to spend the winter with us. You must see, Alma, that this is slightly appalling. I have never seen her—not since she was a little thing with enormous gray eyes and a freckled nose—and I know absolutely nothing about her except what Henry wrote me from time to time, when he stopped his eternal wanderings long enough to remember he had a sister. But judging by the education he gave her—and I consider it simply deplorable—and the evident taste she had for it, and later for “the higher education of woman,” I feel distressingly positive that I cannot approve of the child. I am very sorry now that I did not make an effort to go to her when her father died in England, five years ago, but she wrote me that she had friends there who were doing everything for her, and that she was coming directly to America to enter college according to her father’s wishes, and that there was really no need to disturb myself about her. I could see, Alma, the effect of the independent, strange existence she had led, in that letter. It repelled me. Now, Eleanor, I am sure, would have been completely prostrated, the dear child!
So she came directly to Boston, and I, being so busy with my own preparations for taking Eleanor and Margaret to Paris, simply could not arrange to go on to Boston to see her. As of course you know, we remained abroad four years, and last year, when we returned and I expected to see Helen at last, she wrote me a letter which I got just before leaving Paris, saying that she had decided to go to Oxford for a year to take a course in mathematical astronomy at the Lady Margaret Hall. So we passed each other in mid-ocean.
Fancy, Alma! I knew when I read that letter what kind of a girl she was. One of your hard students, engrossed in books, without one thought for dress or social manners! I am afraid she will prove a severe trial. And just when Eleanor is counting on having such a gay second winter and Margaret is to début. It is a little hard, is it not, dear? Thank Heaven, I shall never have to blame myself as Henry would have to do if he were alive. At least I have seen to it that my daughters have had the education which will fit them to ornament society, the education that I still believe in notwithstanding all this talk of colleges for women and advancement in learning, and college settlements and extensions, and Heaven knows what besides!
My girls have had first, the best of training at Mrs. Meed’s, and then four years at Les Oiseaux, you know. They speak French perfectly, of course, and Margaret has even tried Italian and German. They both ride and drive well, and Eleanor plays and sings very sweetly. But what is the use of my telling you about them when you know them so well?
I only wish, Alma, you could tell me something about Helen! Just think, I have never even seen a photograph of her! It is one of her fads not to have them taken, from which I argue that she is very homely, very opinionated, and very strange. Eleanor has two dozen in different poses, I am sure. The only information I have at all about Helen’s looks is from Margaret, who saw her for an hour in Brookline—it was five years ago—just before we sailed. She had run up to see a Boston friend for a few days, and of course she was very young and has probably forgotten, but she insists that Helen was rather pretty. However, I do not attach the least importance to what Margaret says, because, as you know, she is so good-natured that she always says the best of everyone; and then her tastes are sometimes really deplorable—so unlike Eleanor’s! Besides, her description of Helen does not sound like that of a pretty girl. She says she wore her hair parted and back from her face, and was slightly near-sighted. Think of it, Alma! For the hair, encore passe, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Wenzell have made that so much the fashion lately that one might forgive it; but short-sighted! Eye-glasses! Spectacles perhaps! Hard study since may have completely ruined her eyes. I greatly fear she will show up very badly beside Eleanor’s piquant beauty and Margaret’s freshness.