Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

1/2 “’I beg your pardon,’ he said; ‘but to go back to the letters, how can you fill one every day to your father? I can imagine that lovers might, in writing to each other, but fathers and daughters would not be apt to indulge in that sort of nonsense.’ ”’But Mr. Dinsmore and Elsie are no common father and daughter,‘ remarked Lottie, who had not spoken for the last ten minutes.” (193) Finished reading Elsie’s Girlhood (1872), the third book in the Christian fiction classic, so-nice-it’s-almost-naughty Elsie Dinsmore series by Martha Finley. Will include some thematically relevant spoilers. The title is a bit of a misleader; the first two books covered Elsie’s life from ages seven to I think nine, in almost continuous narrative, while “Elsie’s Girlhood” picks up at nine, then jumps to twelve, fifteen, stays at eighteen for many chapters, and then to twenty and twenty-one. Today, a more apt title may’ve been Elsie’s Adolescence, particularly since it covers her first feelings of love. This is the Mantle Ministries reprint from the 1990s, a facsimile of the original. I‘m thinking it’s a good thing it wasn’t retypeset: this is the only book I have ever seen where the author’s name is misspelled on the title page. I count three other errors: (1) it should say “books 1&2”; (2) while the first book, Elsie Dinsmore, was published in 1868, Elsie’s Girlhood dates from 1872; (3) the poem’s second line should end with “innocence”, not begin the next sentence. But aside from all that! it is a durable, pleasing copy, still readily available and affordable. I’m not sure if the illustration of Elsie is taken from an earlier edition, but it captures how gorgeous her curly hair is. This may represent Elsie when she was fifteen, when she, her friend Carrie Howard and her younger, vain technically-aunt Enna have this exchange: “‘Elsie's manners are quite perfect, I think,’ said Carrie; ‘and her hair is so beautiful, I don't believe any other style of arrangement could improve its appearance in the least.’ “‘But it’s so childish, so absurdly childish! Just that great mass of ringlets hanging about her neck and shoulders. Come, Elsie, I want you to have it dressed in this new style for to-night.’ ”’No, Enna, I am perfectly satisfied to wear it in this childish fashion; and if I were not, still I could not disobey papa.’” (92-93) For Elsie, her father’s word is always decisive unless it contradicts Scripture. By eighteen, her father allowed her to alter the style: ”She wore it now gathered into a loose knot behind, and falling over a comb, in a rich mass of shining curls, while in front it waved and rippled above her white forehead, or fell over it, in soft, tiny, golden brown rings.” Elsie is such a looker, her friend Lottie King feels pangs of same-sex attraction. “‘It is so beautiful!‘ continued Lottie, passing her hand caressingly over it; ’and so is its wearer. Oh, if I were only a gentleman! “‘You don’t wish it,‘ said Elsie, laughing. ‘I don’t believe a real, womanly woman ever does.’” (200) Sage reply. So you can see why she is the prize, cherished possession of her father, Horace Dinsmore, and who to give her away to in marriage is no light matter. The skipping narrative that covers more than a decade begins with Horace himself “tying the knot”, to Elsie’s longtime pious Christian old friend Rose Allison, with whom young Elsie’s shown on the cover. At twelve, the couple’s first child, another Horace, is born. At fifteen, things get more serious when Herbert Carrington, a crippled family friend whom Elsie had long doted on, asks for her hand in marriage. This had me worried. Elsie is not in love, but is so nice, she would do anything to please. Thankfully, in her total deference to her father, Mr. Dinsmore’s no (on health grounds, not on character) is her no. And, it can’t help being convenient and darkly funny, that after Elsie’s refusal, instead of striving to get better, Herbert despairs, rapidly declines, and dies. While on the surface presented as tragic, it reminded me of the openly-reviled Big-Bloat’s celebrated death in ”The Tale of Alā al-Din and Abū Shāmāt” in the Thousand and One Nights. While that kind of treatment would be out of place in a Christian book, nevertheless, there is a seeming judgment on Herbert (who would saddle Elsie with a lame husband, and whom Mr. Dinsmore gives “a gentle hint that one in his ill health should be content to remain single” (129)) in the text. On the enchanted night when he proposes to Elsie, they are having an inspired conversation about turning to Jesus in our afflictions. Yet after he fails to win Elsie, there is no mention of him ever turning to the Lord for consolation. Would reliance on Jesus have made his burdens bearable? Three years later, when Elsie goes to visit her Aunt Wealthy in Ohio, we get the main action, which is both more dramatic and more a laughing matter. Elsie’s near-in-age uncle Arthur, who earlier pestered Elsie for loans she conscientiously refused to give, has been hanging around with the wrong crowd while away at college, and accrues thousands of dollars in gambling debts that he can’t hope to repay, owed to lowlife Tom Jackson. Arthur proposes setting up a marriage with his heiress relation Elsie to satisfy the debt (156-157). Given his bad rep in the family, he is in no shape to write a letter of introduction, so he has Jackson forge one in Aunt Wealthy’s friend’s hand, and boards in the house next to Aunt Wealthy’s under the alias Bromly Egerton, a businessman in need of some rest, and he sets to work charming the reserved Elsie, in hopes of wedding her, breaking her heart, and stealing her inheritance. In a series of this kind, a happy ending is guaranteed, but it is a laugh just to think about someone as holy as Elsie, who doesn’t read secular books on Sunday, and thinks theater and opera are un-Christian, winding up with someone who thinks, ”Ha, ha! Yes, I flatter myself that I have won some reputation in that line, and that not a few of the dear creatures have been very fond of me. It’s really most too bad to break their soft little hearts; but then a man can’t marry ’em all; unless he turns Mormon.” (157) In a letter to Arthur detailing the progress of the plan, ”’And I’ll not be long now in finishing up the job,‘ he continued; ‘it‘s such precious hard work to be so good and pious all the time, that I can hardly wait till matters are fully ripe for action. I‘m in constant danger of letting the mask slip aside in some unguarded moment, and so undoing the whole thing after the world of trouble it has cost me. It‘s no joke, I can assure you, for a man of my tastes and habits to lead the sort of life I‘ve led for the last three months. I believe I‘d give her up this minute, fortune and all, if the winning of them would lay me under the necessity of continuing it for the rest of my days, or even for any length of time. But once the knot is tied, and the property secured, there’ll be an end of this farce. I‘ll let her know I‘m done with cant, will neither talk it nor listen to it.’” (218-219) Such is the man behind the genteel Bromly Egerton mask! He even lets Elsie think she’s converted him; it’s funny if a little dispiriting when she relates the essentials of how one accepts Jesus and becomes a Christian, and ”He looked at her admiringly, and lost in the contemplation of her beauty, had almost betrayed himself by his want of interest in what she was saying.” (217-218) Events reach their most hilarious when Elsie’s father’s friend, Mr. Travilla—more on whom anon—goes with a friend, to locate his son who’s been missing for three days, with a worsening gambling problem. They gain admittance to a gambling den (you can tell Finley’d never been to one, but then again I don’t think I have either), and find the son just in time to hear him shout “I am ruined!” when he loses everything. He draws a pistol, but Travilla knocks it from his hand before he can blow his brains out (224). When he visits Elsie, he immediately recognizes “Bromly Egerton” as the gamester to whom the despairing young man had lost all his money—only last week! Alas for Tom Jackson, he couldn’t quite “fake it till you make it,” he slipped away from going riding with Elsie and companions, and attending church multiple times a week, to spend nights in dissipation. But he has by then won Elsie’s heart. Trusting as she is, she believes there must be some mistake despite mounting evidence of who Egerton really is, and convincing her of his duplicity is a protracted struggle. It is only through obedience to her father, who immediately intervenes and heads to Ohio himself, that Elsie doesnkt elope and solemnize the disastrous match. The story is as good an argument as you’ll get for parental authority, particularly for a young heiress whom a man could easily to tempted to woo for her wealth. In the drama with supposed gentleman Bromly Egerton/vicious Tom Jackson, we get a dose of what the Elsie Dinsmore series is now infamous for: father-daughter love that borders on incestuous. In the first two books, little Elsie craved her fathers caresses and kisses—but even at eighteen, they share a remarkable amount of intimacy. After Mr. Dinsmore arrives and warns Elsie against any communications with Egerton, a sudden worry strikes him, and he asks, ”’Elsie, have you ever allowed him to touch your lips?‘ he asked almost sternly. “‘No, papa, not even my cheek. I would not while we were not engaged; and that could not be without your consent.’ “‘I am truly thankful for that!‘ he exclaimed in a tone of relief; ’to know that he had—that these sweet lips had been polluted by contact with his—would be worse to me than the loss of half my fortune.‘ And lifting her face as he spoke, he pressed his own to them again and again.” (258) I think people would find it very, very strange today if a dad kissed his 18-year-old on the lips over and over. But, of course, they don’t do anything properly sexual. As I’ve said before, this seems to reflect a traditional, natural reality: a girl is under her father’s dominion until he gives her away in marriage, so it makes sense that until them, she might even share kisses and other innocent gestures of affection with him. Almost no one now, after the first few years of her life, would do that without embarrassment—but even at the time, this was not normal. As Lottie says, “Mr. Dinsmore and Elsie are no common father and daughter.” Later, when Egerton surprises Elsie, and she is slow in pulling herself away, and gets held and kissed by him (on the cheek), and as a dutiful daughter, tells all to her father, he holds her in disgrace for a few days. But we get a very Marian moment in this very Protestant novel, when Mrs. Dinsmore intercedes for her to her husband, and he forgives her after three days. Who Elsie does wind up with gets settled by volume’s end—and is likewise bound to upset many present-day readers. Mr. Travilla, who is thirty-four by the time Elsie is eighteen (226), had been sporadically hitting on Elsie since she was little, and picks it up early in Elsie’s Girlhood. When Elsie is twelve, so he about twenty-eight, ”he caught hold of her, set her on his knee, and giving her a kiss, said, ‘I wish you were ten years older, Elsie, or I ten years younger.’ ”’Why, Mr. Travilla, she asked rather wonderingly. “‘Oh, because we would then be nearer of an age, and maybe you would like me better.’ “‘No, I wouldn’t, not a bit,’ she said, putting her arm round his neck, ‘for I like you now just as well as I could like any gentleman but papa.’” (47-48) Foreshadowing. With responses like that, it is no wonder that when, on Elsie’s display of anxiety on mistakenly believing Mr. Travilla was engaged, he learns that she cares, and instantly proposes, she says yes! Mr. Dinsmore, though he’d hoped to keep Elsie to himself some years more, can only approve the match to his worthy old friend. The last illustration, from the Dodd, Mead and Company edition, depicts the destined meeting between Elsie and Mr. Travilla “alone in her favourite arbor,” (367-368). The next installment, Elsie’s Womanhood (1875), sees the Southern heroine through the War Between the States, as I read, which a couple of hints within the text have already shown must be fast approaching. #MarthaFinley #ElsiesGirlhood #ElsieDinsmore #fathers #daughters #incest #love #romance #countercultural #drama #christianfiction #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books