Betsy-Tacy and Tib (10 page)

A
UNT DOLLY’S train was to reach Deep Valley at night. Betsy and Tacy would be in bed and asleep when she arrived. They wanted to be at Tib’s house early the next morning. So they worked out a plan.

That night when Tacy went to bed, she was to tie a string to her big toe. She was to let the string hang
out the window. In the morning Betsy would come over and pull the string to wake her up.

“But maybe you won’t wake up first, Betsy,” Tacy said as she and Betsy climbed the stairs to the little room Tacy shared with Katie.

“That’s right,” said Betsy. “Maybe I won’t. Maybe we’d better tie a string to my toe too.”

So after they had poked a string … with a stone on one end to make it fall to the ground … through a hole in the screen, and tied the other end of the string to the bedpost, awaiting night and Tacy’s toe, they crossed the street to Betsy’s house. They climbed the stairs to the little room Betsy shared with Julia and poked a string through a hole in
that
screen and tied the other end to a post of
that
bed, awaiting night and
Betsy’s
toe. And that night Julia and Katie helped them tie the strings to their big toes. (Julia and Katie were nice sometimes.)

But, as it happened, neither string got pulled.

Tacy had bad dreams and twisted and turned in the night so that the string was wound around her leg and Betsy would have had to stand on stilts to reach it. And Betsy’s string came off her toe in the night. But both of them woke up early just the same. They met in the middle of the road.

It was very early; the sky was the color of Betsy’s mother’s opal ring. The air was cold, and up on the
Hill Street Hill where Betsy and Tacy went to pick flowers for Aunt Dolly, the grass was wet with dew. When their arms were full of goldenrod and bright purple asters, they went down to Hill Street and sat on Tacy’s hitching block. It was too early yet to go to Tib’s.

“I imagine she’ll be beautiful,” said Tacy.

“Of course she will,” said Betsy. “Remember how her picture looked?”

“It looked like a grown-up doll,” said Tacy.

The sun came up higher and higher, and the sky turned a bright gay blue. Smoke began to pour from chimneys, and Grandpa Williams came out to mow his lawn.

“I think we could go to Tib’s now,” said Betsy.

“We’d better,” said Tacy, “or we’ll be called to breakfast.”

So they skipped down Hill Street and through the vacant lot and rapped at Tib’s back door.

Matilda came to the door. She had on an apron and she held a long fork in her hand. She looked busy.

“Tib can’t come out yet. She’s eating breakfast. There’s company,” Matilda said.

Betsy and Tacy looked at each other. There was company! Then there hadn’t been any mistake.

“It’s the company we’ve come to see,” said Betsy.

“We’ve brought her these flowers,” said Tacy.

“We’ve wiped our feet,” said Betsy, and she wiped them again, hard, and so did Tacy.

“Well, wait a minute,” Matilda said.

She went through the swinging door into the dining room. Betsy and Tacy waited.

“You can come in,” Matilda said when she returned.

They followed her into the dining room. The family was at breakfast there. Tib’s father sat at the head of the table with Hobbie in a high chair beside him. Tib’s mother sat at the foot. Tib and Freddie sat on one side of the table; and on the other side, facing them, sat Aunt Dolly.

She was more beautiful than her picture. She was more beautiful even than they had imagined her to be. She had blue eyes like Tib’s and a pink and white face like a doll’s. Her blonde hair was piled in curls on the top of her head.

When Betsy and Tacy entered the room, Tib’s face turned red.

“Come in,” said Tib’s mother in her brisk kind voice. “Matilda says you came to see Aunt Dolly.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Betsy. Her face was shining with excitement.

Tacy didn’t say a word. She was bashful. Tacy wasn’t bashful with Mr. and Mrs. Muller any more,
but she was very bashful with Aunt Dolly.

Betsy wasn’t bashful exactly, but she felt queer inside.

“We brought her some flowers,” she said, nodding toward Aunt Dolly.

Aunt Dolly threw back her head and laughed. She had a little tinkling laugh; it sounded like those bells made of glass and painted with strange flowers which hung on the porch at Betsy’s house and chimed when the wind blew.

“Why do you bring flowers to me?” she asked in a tone which showed that she knew the reason perfectly well.

“Because you’re so pretty,” said Betsy, and everyone laughed.

“That’s because I had a grandmother who came from Vienna,” Aunt Dolly said, pushing her soft light curls into place.

“Frederick,” said Mr. Muller. “Where are your manners? Won’t you draw up some chairs for these ladies?”

“Oh,” said Betsy. “We didn’t come to breakfast.”

“Have some coffee cake at least,” said Mrs. Muller. “Matilda will put the flowers in a vase.”

So Matilda put the flowers in a vase, and Freddie brought chairs, and Betsy and Tacy ate coffee cake and looked at Aunt Dolly. Tib and Freddie looked
at Betsy and Tacy. The grown-ups talked about Aunt Dolly’s visit, and presently they all finished breakfast and Aunt Dolly stood up.

Betsy and Tacy could see her better then. She was wearing a teagown of pleated white silk, and beneath her small bosom pale blue ribbons were tied.

“I must go to unpack,” she said, patting back a yawn with polished fingertips. “Would you children like to come along and see my clothes?”

“Oh, yes,” said Betsy and Tacy.

“Freddie can tell your mothers where you are,” said Mrs. Muller. “He is going to play with Paul.”

So Freddie went off to tell Mrs. Ray and Mrs. Kelly that Betsy and Tacy would be home after a while, and Betsy and Tacy and Tib followed Aunt Dolly to her room.

Her big trunk stood open, and while Betsy and Tacy and Tib watched, entranced, she lifted out her dresses. She certainly had plenty of dresses! There were morning dresses and afternoon dresses; a dress just for horseback riding and a dress just for bicycle riding and lots of ball gowns.

“Dolly!” said Tib’s mother, laughing. “Did you forget that you were coming to visit in a small Minnesota town?”

“Oh, I knew you’d like to see them,” said Aunt Dolly. “And I like to show them.” And she went off to the bureau and moistened her fingers with perfume and touched the lobes of her ears. “Thank you for the flowers, children,” she said in a tone which showed that she was ready for them to go.

“You’re welcome,” said Betsy and Tacy.

“May I go out to play?” asked Tib.

And Betsy and Tacy and Tib went out to the knoll.

“Well,” asked Tib when they were seated beneath the oak tree. “What do you think?”

“She’s beautiful,” said Betsy.

“Do you think she lives in all those crazy places?” asked Tib. “In the Mirror Palace or up in our S.L.?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering,” said Tacy.

Betsy did not answer right away.

“Not any more she doesn’t,” she said at last.

“What do you mean … ‘not any more’? I don’t understand,” said Tib.

Betsy hesitated. It was hard to explain. The truth was that Aunt Dolly was more thrilling being just what she was, than she would be being anything that Betsy could invent. Was that because she was grown-up?

Tacy knew what Betsy was thinking.

“I wonder what it will be like to be grown-up,” she said.

“I don’t think it will be as nice as being children,” said Tib.

“Neither do I,” said Tacy. “You don’t want to be grown-up, do you, Betsy? At least, not right away.”

Betsy sat still for a long moment and thought. She thought about the fun it was being a child. She thought about the Hill Street Hill, and their bench. She thought about the Big Hill and the ravine and the Secret Lane. She looked up into the green shade of the oak tree and thought about the backyard maple.

“No,” she answered slowly, “I don’t want to be grown-up yet. But I want to be just a little older.”

“You’re nine already,” said Tacy.

“Next year,” said Tib, “we’ll all be ten.”

Betsy jumped up joyfully.

“That’s what I’d like to be … ten. You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It’s the beginning of growing up, to get two numbers in your age.”

Tacy and Tib jumped up too, and they started through the vacant lot.

“But what will we do when we are ten?” asked Tib as they climbed Hill Street Hill.

“I suppose we’ll be going to balls,” said Betsy. “I’m planning to have a pale pink satin ball gown.”

“I’ll have a blue one,” said Tacy.

“Mine will have a long train,” said Betsy.

“I’ll carry a big feather fan,” said Tacy.

“But we won’t be going to balls when we are only ten years old,” said Tib.

Tib always said things like that. But Betsy and Tacy liked her just the same.

“We won’t be going to balls, maybe,” said Betsy. “But we’ll have lots of fun, you and me and Tacy.”

And so they did.

THE END

M
AUD
H
ART
L
OVELACE
was born on April 25, 1892, in Mankato, Minnesota. Like Betsy, Maud followed her mother around the house at age five asking questions such as “How do you spell ‘going down the street'?” for the stories she had already begun to write. Soon she was writing poems and plays. When Maud was ten, a booklet of her poems was printed; and by age eighteen, she had sold her first short story.

The Hart family left Mankato shortly after Maud’s high school graduation in 1910 and settled in Minneapolis, where Maud attended the University of Minnesota. In 1917, she married Delos W. Lovelace, a newspaper reporter who later became a popular writer of short stories.

The Lovelaces’ daughter, Merian, was born in 1931. Maud would tell her daughter bedtime stories about her childhood, and it was these stories that gave her the idea of writing the Betsy-Tacy books. Maud did not intend to write an entire series when
Betsy-Tacy,
the first book, was published in 1940, but readers asked for more stories. So Maud took Betsy through high school and beyond college to the “great world” and marriage. The final book in the series,
Betsy’s Wedding
, was published in 1955.

The Betsy-Tacy books are based very closely on Maud’s own life. “I could make it all up, but in these Betsy-Tacy stories, I love to work from real incidents,” Maud wrote. “The Ray family is a true portrayal of the Hart family. Mr. Ray is like Tom Hart; Mrs. Ray like Stella Palmer Hart; Julia like Kathleen; Margaret like Helen; and Betsy is like me, except that, of course, I glamorized her to make her a proper heroine.” Tacy and Tib are based on Maud’s real-life best friends, Frances “Bick” Kenney and Marjorie “Midge” Gerlach, and Deep Valley is based on Mankato.

In fact, so much in the books was taken from real life that it is sometimes difficult to draw the line between fact and fiction. And through the years, Maud received a great deal of fan mail from readers who were fascinated by the question—what is true, and what is made up?

B
ETSY
A
ND
T
ACY
first meet Tib Muller at the end of
Betsy-Tacy
, when the girls are six years old. In real life, however, Maud knew Marjorie Gerlach—or “Midge,” as she was called—before then, although they may not really have been friends yet, because they were so young. As Maud remarked: “I have heard from my mother that I had known [Midge] since we were in our baby carriages, for our mothers knew each other.” So perhaps it wasn’t until the girls were six that they first started to play together. But we do know that by the summer of 1900, when Maud, Bick, and Midge were eight years old, the three girls had become fast friends, just like their fictional counterparts at the beginning of
Betsy-Tacy and Tib.

Maud and Bick were fascinated with Midge’s house, which stood at 503 Byron Street in Mankato.

Maud and Bick were fascinated by Midge’s house, just as Betsy and Tacy are by Tib’s. Maud once wrote: “Bick and I discovered [Midge’s] chocolate-colored house with colored glass over the front door, which to us was a mansion of all glories.” Midge’s father, who was an architect, like Mr. Muller in the story, apparently designed the Gerlach house. But readers may be surprised to know that although Midge’s house
was
brown, and really
did
have a pane of colored glass over the front door, it never had a tower. Instead, it was the house behind Midge’s that had a tower, and it is likely this tower that inspired Maud to invent one for Tib’s house.

Although Midge’s house didn’t really have a tower, Maud may have gotten her inspiration from this house, which stood behind Midge’s.

Lois Lenski’s drawing of Tib’s house

Henry Gerlach, Midge’s father, was an architect, like Mr. Muller.

While Midge’s house was a favorite place for indoor fun, the three girls loved to roam the Big Hill—which was really Prospect Heights—for outdoor fun. A Mankato neighbor once described Prospect Heights in much the same way Maud describes the Big Hill in the story: “It was a natural playground for all the children in our neighborhood. On the other side of the hill was a ravine with a small creek, and on the other side of the creek was Bunker Hill. On the hill and in the ravine, the wildflowers grew in abundance.” And there really was a house on the hill, where Anna Asplund lived with her family. Mrs. Asplund was the inspiration for the character Mrs. Ekstrom, who offers sugar cookies to the three hungry beggars at her door.

Many of the episodes in the book, including the begging episode, were based on real-life incidents. While describing a Thanksgiving dinner reunion with Bick, Maud reminisced: “We talked about old days and laughed very hard about the time we made Everything Pudding and cut off one another’s hair.” And an old friend of Maud’s remembered that “the street carnival was just as it is in the book, flying lady and all.” Maud also recalled that Bick played the part of the Flying Lady on the end of a seesaw in the Hart woodshed. Even the mishaps—such as when Bick yelled that she was falling off—are accurately depicted in the book.

Midge’s mother, Minnie Gerlach.

Of course, not everything in the book is based on real life. One interesting difference involves Midge’s family. Although Midge’s brothers, Henry and William, are fictionalized in the books as Freddie and Hobbie, her baby sister, Dorothy, never appears in the books at all. But Dorothy’s nickname will be familiar to readers—Maud uses her name for the character Aunt Dolly, who first appears in
Betsy-Tacy and Tib.

At the end of
Betsy-Tacy and Tib
, the girls wonder what it would be like to be ten. “We won’t be going to balls, maybe,” Betsy says to Tib. “But we’ll have lots of fun, you and me and Tacy.” And we can guess that Maud, Bick, and Midge did too.

Maud Hart Lovelace died on March 11, 1980. But her legacy lives on in the beloved series she created and in her legions of fans, many of whom are members of the Betsy-Tacy Society and the Maud Hart Lovelace Society. For more information, write to:

The Betsy-Tacy Society
c/o BECHS
415 Cherry Street
Mankato, MN 56001

The Maud Hart Lovelace Society
Fifty 94th Circle NW, # 201
Minneapolis, MN 55448

Adapted from
The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of
   Maud Hart Lovelace
by Sharla Scannell Whalen