Grandmother as femme fatale...
Apr. 4th, 2004 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaSnippets from a letter dated July 24 1998. I remember reading it on the bus from Woods Hole to Boston, eyebrows raised higher and higher!
[1930-31?, freshman year at Radcliffe, grandmother is 16-17]
"The highlight of my years was belonging to the Radcliffe choral society. I think it was the first year that Radcliffe and Harvard glee clubs had been invited to be the pension fund performers for the Boston symphony. We sang the Bach B minor mass. At one of the rehearsals G. [my grandfather] tried to pick me up but I told him I had a ride home. That was with Howard Brooks, a senior and president of the glee club. [She knew him because he was the furnace repair man, paying his way through school, for the family for whom she was an au pair, paying her way through school.] Howard came along and saw G. and introduced me. G. said 'we just met.' It was several years before G. and I became seriously involved but I saw him from time to time and got him dates.
.... Two years ago North [one of her 'beaux', later a family friend] sent me some pages from a notebook he kept as a sophomore, mostly about moi. I read them with pleasure and interest to discover he thought of me as a femme fatale. I did have lots of fun. Anyway to backtrack a bit - the pension fund concerts were experiences, so wonderful. That first year the orchestra had a dress rehearsal and buffet supper for us and them in the basement of symphony hall. The double bass principal, whose last name began with Z, danced with me and invited me to go to Vienna with him for the summer. ...
[summer 1931?, coastal Maine/NH; grandmother is 17, au pair with a new family]
... I was responsible for Francis [age 5] all day and after he was in bed, with one afternoon off whoich I spent at the beach. ... Francis and I were in adjoining rooms and I stayed with him at night. One night Mr. B appeared and had more on his mind, to my consternation, than seeing how we were. He chased me around the bedroom to my surprise and horror, but I successfully fended him off. I didn;t know what to do aout this, surely not report it to his wife and I needed the job, so I kept quiet. I was glad when the summer ended and never thought to report it to Radcliffe [which had placed her with the family]. ...
[summer 1932?, new family as au pair, again at the beach, grandmother is 18]
... So that was OK, 3 little girls and days at the beach. I met a young man with a motor cycle and he took me riding on the back until my employers got my sister to forbid it. I didn't really mind. The Halls drank a lot, but the Browns were stable... [I have seen photographs of grandmother with the motocycle man, and in a wool bathing suit from this summer - my, those old-fashioned bathing suits were revealing in their way!]
[1930-31?, freshman year at Radcliffe, grandmother is 16-17]
"The highlight of my years was belonging to the Radcliffe choral society. I think it was the first year that Radcliffe and Harvard glee clubs had been invited to be the pension fund performers for the Boston symphony. We sang the Bach B minor mass. At one of the rehearsals G. [my grandfather] tried to pick me up but I told him I had a ride home. That was with Howard Brooks, a senior and president of the glee club. [She knew him because he was the furnace repair man, paying his way through school, for the family for whom she was an au pair, paying her way through school.] Howard came along and saw G. and introduced me. G. said 'we just met.' It was several years before G. and I became seriously involved but I saw him from time to time and got him dates.
.... Two years ago North [one of her 'beaux', later a family friend] sent me some pages from a notebook he kept as a sophomore, mostly about moi. I read them with pleasure and interest to discover he thought of me as a femme fatale. I did have lots of fun. Anyway to backtrack a bit - the pension fund concerts were experiences, so wonderful. That first year the orchestra had a dress rehearsal and buffet supper for us and them in the basement of symphony hall. The double bass principal, whose last name began with Z, danced with me and invited me to go to Vienna with him for the summer. ...
[summer 1931?, coastal Maine/NH; grandmother is 17, au pair with a new family]
... I was responsible for Francis [age 5] all day and after he was in bed, with one afternoon off whoich I spent at the beach. ... Francis and I were in adjoining rooms and I stayed with him at night. One night Mr. B appeared and had more on his mind, to my consternation, than seeing how we were. He chased me around the bedroom to my surprise and horror, but I successfully fended him off. I didn;t know what to do aout this, surely not report it to his wife and I needed the job, so I kept quiet. I was glad when the summer ended and never thought to report it to Radcliffe [which had placed her with the family]. ...
[summer 1932?, new family as au pair, again at the beach, grandmother is 18]
... So that was OK, 3 little girls and days at the beach. I met a young man with a motor cycle and he took me riding on the back until my employers got my sister to forbid it. I didn't really mind. The Halls drank a lot, but the Browns were stable... [I have seen photographs of grandmother with the motocycle man, and in a wool bathing suit from this summer - my, those old-fashioned bathing suits were revealing in their way!]