Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Nadine's Diary, "Talking over Old Love Affairs"

Tuesday, Nov. 13, 94.  School begin, did not get up till nearly 8 oclock.  Missed my breakfast.  Mr. Thomas & Lucirs (?) brother came up.  We all went to chapel.  Sat in the second row in the gallery.  Mr. Hodges came in and sat down just back of us.  Clara went on telling him about what a funny noise she heard the night before.  She told him it was the pressure of four life coming in contact.  Some fellow down stairs flirted with me and I smiled on him.  Hodges saw him and ask me if I saw him trying to flirt with me.  I denied flirting* with him.  Lucy, Nannie, and I stayed till the Grammar classes were arranged.  Mr. Hodges and Clara came on home.  He brought the picture of his home over for me to keep a while for him.  He came over after I came home and stayed and went down to dinner with us.  Had lots of fun at the table.  Clara and I stole three pieces of bread and brought up to our room with us. Mr. Hodges came home with us and stayed till 2 oclock when he had to go to class.  Clara went to class at one oclock and locked up in the room.  Some person knocked at the door but we never payed any attention to it so they went away.  Don't know who it was.  I sat on his lap all the while he was here.  Some person knocked and it was Mr. Waren.  He came in.  Ask for Clara.  Stayed a few minutes and went to class.  Mr. Hodges took his leave.  Clara was in the bed room.  She came out.  Fred kissed her two or three times and I through I would not act the old maid and took a sneak.  Went in to Thomas & Whitlaws room and Nannie put me to work finishing the ruffle of her blue dress.  Mr. Thomas came up.  He got my diary and was determined to read it.  I took after him.  Ran out in the hall.  Mr. Lambert, the janitor, came out and told us no running in the hall.  It was study hour.  I came in my room and got so sick of Clara & Fred spooning.  I tried to write in my diary but they made me so nervous I could not do it.  He left at 5 oclock and we got ready for supper after talking over old love affairs.  Nannie came in.  Said they were invited out to oyster stew.  But we were not in it.  She gave us some candy.  There came a knock at the door and Clara was sitting in the room undressed and she screamed to the top of her voice and ran in the bed room.  Went to supper.  Had lots of fun.  Hodges and Warne came home with us.  The Club intended going out sleighing but did not because Clara and Fred did not care to go.  Nanny, Lucy, & Mr. Thomas were here a little white.  Had lots of fun.  Mr. Lambert the landlord of Mound Hall knocked at the door and said we would have to keep move quick.  Warne and Clara kept the sitting room and Hodges & I took the other one.  Ge, how we did spoon.  They went home about 10 oclock.  Some person threw snow in the room and frightened Clara nearly to death for she was sitting in Fred's lap.  Hodges'  cuffs came off as usual.  Fred brought Clara a box of candy from Chicago.  It was a beautiful night and Clara & I got ready to retire and put up the window shade before we were quite ready to retire and some one went past and if you could have seen us from every direction.  Clara was trying to turn down the light. We sat by the windows for a little while dreaming of loved ones and home.  How perfect every thing looked.  The snow was about 1 1/2 feet deep.  Hodges wanted to get a single cutter and go sleighing if the Club didn't but I didn't want to go.  I didn't feel very well.

*Flirting:  interesting article about flirting in the 1890s--Fannie's Flirtations:  Ettiquette, Reality and the Age of Choice.  The abstract reads:
The 1890s were, for bright young females, an age of choice. Despite admonitions that flirting would ruin their reputations, many south central Kentucky adolescents enjoyed courtship rituals and remained highly respected in their communities. For every Charlotte Perkins Gilman with a mission set on advancing the status of women within our society, numerous females existed simply to enjoy life’s fullness and frivolity. Fannie Morton Bryan’s life story, as told through her diaries and newspaper accounts, gives readers a glimpse of the many rather than the few, the fun-loving rather than the serious-minded, and the old maid flirt in the largest American generation of unwed females between 1835 and 1980.

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