Meadow Brook musings
May 12, 2010

Commenced a new girls series from 1913 or so, with "The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas; Or, Fun and Frolic in the Summer Camp", by Janet Aldridge. I've just begun, but I'm already wondering about the author--who in their right mind would decide to make a featured character out of a vaccous half-wit with a speech impediment, poor impulse control, and the attention-span of a gnat? The lisp is especially puzzling--just the thought of translating all the S's to TH's make me weary. Reading the damn things is tiring enough. Was incomprehensible dialogue in vogue back then? This is almost as irritating as attempting to read Dinah's speeches in The Bobbsey Twins*.

Anyway. These books feature a group of four girls, accompanied by their favorite school teacher, as they experience a number of vacation adventures. An assortment fairly typical of these kinds of books--there's 16-year-old Harriet, who is kind of a Ruth Fielding type--poor, but quiet, dignified, mature, thoughtful, and kind. Margery "Buster" Brown and Hazel Holland, who seem to be kind of mid-pack, generic personality girls required by the formula. Margery may be the fat girl--there have been hints.

Another key figure is Miss Elting, the spinster schoolteacher who chaperones them on their adventures, and who is especially fond of Harriet**.

And then there is the afore-mentioned lisping half-wit, Grace "Tommy" Thompson. Oh, good gravy, what an annoying goon this one is. If you ARE going to write a character with her issues, whatever would prompt you to make THAT the "motor-mouth, spill-the-beans" character? Sheesh.

Also of interest in the cast of characters is A young woman known as "Crazy Jane" (?!). This character makes her entrance by tearing down the road in her auto, out-running a train at a crossing. Immediately after that, she nearly runs down one of the Meadow Brook Girls. (But since it was Tommy, I won't be too harsh on her. Hee.) A description of Jane:
Jane McCarthy had acquired the name of "Crazy Jane" because of her reckless driving, her harum-scarum ways and her complete ignoring of public opinion. Not a few of the residents of the little New Hampshire village feared that Jane might be brought home after one of her wild drives, with broken bones, if not worse.

In spite of her reckless manner Jane was well liked. She was good hearted and very charitable, though her charity was not always bestowed with judgment. Being motherless, she had practically done as she pleased ever since she began to walk, and her father, a wealthy contractor, had indulged her every whim, believing that Jane could do no wrong. Jane was prompt to take advantage of this paternal leniency, though her worst offense was that of continuously terrorizing the neighborhood in which she lived and the whole countryside as well, by her reckless driving with both car and horse.

Spoiled brat, erratic manner, reckless driver. But since she splashes wodges of cash around, everybody likes her.

Something tells me that this isn't going to my favorite series ever...



*Seriously--what was that? Those books were intended for young readers! When I was six, I had NO IDEA that Dinah's bizarre accent was supposed to indicate "comical darkie character speaking". I just skimmed past and picked it up further down the page, when they all started speaking normally again. Well, as normally as those sappy little twins ever did, that is.
**This doesn't read, I'm sure, in quite the same way as it did in 1913:
The young teacher exerted a great influence over the four Meadow-Brook Girls; she had been especially helpful to Harriet and a closer relation than that of teacher and pupil existed between the two. Both were passionately fond of Nature. They loved the fields, the woods and the waters and many a care-free happy hour they had spent together. 'Cause what I'm getting out of it, frankly, is sweet Sapphic love. Complete with skinny-dipping, daisy chains, and cavorting in the bushes.