People of the Whirlpool: From The Experience Book of a Commuter's WifeWright, Mabel Osgood
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People of the Whirlpool: From The Experience Book of a Commuter's Wife
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Diary fiction; Epistolary fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
Personally anything but attractive, he seems able to organize and control
others in a most singular way. Perhaps it is because he has a genius for
taking pains and planning successful entertainments for his friends, even
to the minutest detail, and giving them the subtle distinction of both
originality and finish, without troubling their givers to think for
themselves. Miss Lavinia-says that he has the entree of the two or three
very exclusive New York houses that have never yet opened their doors to
Mrs. Latham and several more aspiring Whirlpoolers, Mrs. Jenks-Smith
having penetrated the sacred precincts, only by right of having been
presented at the English Court in the last reign through the influence of
her stepdaughter, who married a poverty-stricken title.
"I don't know what it all amounts to," said the outspoken Lady of
the Bluffs on her return, "except that I'm in it now with both feet,
which is little enough pay for the trouble I took and the money
Jenks-Smith put out.
"Our son-in-law? No, he's not exactly English, he's Irish, blood of the
old kings, they say; but all the good it does him is, that he can wear
his hat with a feather in it, or else his shoes, I can never remember
which, in the presence of royalty, when if it wasn't for good American
money he'd have neither one or the other.
"Money? Oh yes, that's all they want of us over there; we've no cause to
stick up our noses and think it's ourselves. We know, Jenks-Smith and I,
for haven't we been financial mother and father in law to a pair of them
for ten years? Jenks-Smith was smart, though; he wouldn't give a lump sum
down, but makes them an allowance, and we go over every year or so and
bail them out of some sort of a mess to boot, have the plumbing fixed up,
and start the children all over with new clothes. That's what we're doing
when the papers say, 'Mr. and Mrs. Jenks-Smith, who went to Carlsbad for
the waters, are now in Ireland, being entertained in regal style by their
daughter and son-in-law at Bally-whack House.'"
Miss Lavinia says with a shiver that whoever marries Monty Bell, and it
is absolutely necessary for him to make a wealthy connection in the
immediate future, will have all New York doors open to her, and that, as
Mrs. Latham is leaving no stone unturned in order to become a social
leader, a marriage between Sylvia and Mr. Bell would secure her the
complete prestige necessary to her ambition, while rearranged families
are so common and often the results of such trivial causes, that the fact
of the man's having a lovely wife and two children living abroad does not
militate against him in the least. It all seems ghastly, this living life
as if it was a race track, where to reach the social goal is the only
thought, no matter how, or over or through what wreckage, or in what
company the race is to be won.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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