Page 32 - 1932 Hartridge

1 have never seen such a changed person in my life. She looked very young and swore that she wasn't a day over thirty, though we all know better. She was absolutely noisy and screamed that she wanted to go to the circus, because some sympathi2;er had sent her a free ticket. The sympathi2,er turned out to be Lucie
DuBois, who does a breath-taking bare-backriding act for Barnum and Bailey. She thinks that Rowland is perfectly justified in murdering her husband. Lucie is bearing a grudge against her husband at the moment because he insisted that she
could double her salary if she'd only wear baskets tied to her feet when she ran and jumped on the galloping horse. She says she does enough stunts without that one, which would surely break her neck. She's suing for divorce, I believe, with Kay Taylor as her lawyer. Kay is also her manager, and they've been touring around together since they graduated. They have worked up an astounding act and put May Wirth out of business some years ago. I think that Kathryn will soon own the circus, she is so invaluable to it.
The trial proceeded very slowly, and Judge Blanding soon called an adjournment. Rowland was really uncontrollable. As we pushed our way out, we bumped into Jean Smithers. She had come to the trial but missed it as usual, because she was in such a rush getting ready to go to Bermuda that she hadn't been able to leave her children and her packing “a minute sooner." Anyway she had had to take her youngest to Shally to have his new sweater fitted. Shally runs a terribly expensive shop on Fifth Avenue, where she does hand knitting for very highbrow customers.
She has that first green sweater on a velvet cushion in her front window as an example of her earliest art. When you go into her shop, soft music greets your ears, and if you trace it to its source, you will find Martha Kingman leading a string quartet.
She just does this to be obliging and help Shally gather customers—her real vocation is playing and singing in Carnegie Hall. I go to hear her quite often and sit silent in open-mouthed wonder.
I managed to hold Jean long enough to tell her all about Mary, so that she could tell Shally and Mabel Howell, with whom she still keeps in touch. I'm afraid her reason is a slightly selfish one: Mabel has twelve children, and whenever
Jean and her husband want to go anywhere without their offspring, they take them to Mabel. Mabel told her, with her usual huge grin, that two or three more didn't make any difference when you already had twelve! She lives up in the country and none of us have seen her; have you? Do take your little girls up there—they say it's a perfect children's paradise—and the more children there are, the more Howell likes it.
Her husband must be a paragon of patience.
Remember me to your husband and babies, and do write Rowland a note. Won't
you come to tea next Friday and have a good gossip about old times? As ever,
Page Tzeenty-cighi
Hallie (Franklin), m . h ., '32.