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Paula #1
Paula
Ten year old Paula is growing up close to the steel mills in a big house on Lake Michigan at the turn of the century. A trip to the World's Fair, a Labor strike, an old sailor's heart attack, a city fire, and holidays are the backdrop for Paula to learn more about her immigrant friends, and more about herself.
223 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1939
12 people want to read
About the author
Marguerite Vance
73 books7 followersAka Sarah K. Wright (Tales From Grimm), Anne Kramer.
" Marguerite Vance was born in Chicago, Illinois, and attended Miss Martin's School there, from the primary grades to graduation from the collegiate department.
Following graduation she spent three years in Paris. Returning home she married and lived for twenty-one years in Cleveland. After her husband's death in 1931 Mrs. Vance had charge of the book department in the Eastman Bolton Gallery, then for two years was with the Eigbee book department, both in Cleveland.
In 1933 she (moved) to New York to take charge of the children's book department in Dutton's Book Store on Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street. That year her first book, A Star for Hansi, was published by Harper.
In 1940 she joined the staff of E.P. Dutton & Company as editor of children's books. Of her own published books, the most recent carry the Dutton imprint. They are: Boy on the Road: A Christmas Story; While Shepherds Watched; Martha, Daughter of Virginia; Patsy Jefferson of Monticello; The Lees Of Arlington; Marie Antoinette, Daughter of an Empress; Lady Jane Grey, Reluctant Queen; The Jacksons of Tennessee; On Wings of Fire; Windows for Rosemary and The Empress Josephine: from Martinique to Malmaison
(September 1956)."
- This biography is not dated but was requested on October 11th 1960 in correspondence between Vance, E.P. Dutton and Maine State Library's Maine Author Collection so is presumed accurate at least up until that point. The full correspondence can be read here
" Marguerite Vance was born in Chicago, Illinois, and attended Miss Martin's School there, from the primary grades to graduation from the collegiate department.
Following graduation she spent three years in Paris. Returning home she married and lived for twenty-one years in Cleveland. After her husband's death in 1931 Mrs. Vance had charge of the book department in the Eastman Bolton Gallery, then for two years was with the Eigbee book department, both in Cleveland.
In 1933 she (moved) to New York to take charge of the children's book department in Dutton's Book Store on Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street. That year her first book, A Star for Hansi, was published by Harper.
In 1940 she joined the staff of E.P. Dutton & Company as editor of children's books. Of her own published books, the most recent carry the Dutton imprint. They are: Boy on the Road: A Christmas Story; While Shepherds Watched; Martha, Daughter of Virginia; Patsy Jefferson of Monticello; The Lees Of Arlington; Marie Antoinette, Daughter of an Empress; Lady Jane Grey, Reluctant Queen; The Jacksons of Tennessee; On Wings of Fire; Windows for Rosemary and The Empress Josephine: from Martinique to Malmaison
(September 1956)."
- This biography is not dated but was requested on October 11th 1960 in correspondence between Vance, E.P. Dutton and Maine State Library's Maine Author Collection so is presumed accurate at least up until that point. The full correspondence can be read here
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July 25, 2022
This 1939 juvenile set in 1893 chronicles a year in the life of ten year-old Paula Madden, growing up a short distance from Chicago (where the author spent her childhood) in a mill town populated mostly by Eastern European and Swedish immigrants. Paula's father is the local doctor, and they live in her great grandfather's old farm house. It stands in a small orchard, the last remaining bit of acreage of what was once a vast farm (which we're told was originally purchased from the Potawatomi tribe). The steel mill, the housing for its workers, and the growing town have eaten up all the rest. Paula, we're told, is one of only two native English speaking children in her local school, where she's happy and has many friends.
It's an episodic story -- the book's goodreads description lists some of those episodes -- and I found it something of a chore to read (especially because of Paula's lamentable habit of addressing her mother as "Mothe' Dear"), but the part of my brain that still thinks it's in college immediately latched on to the topic of how immigrants are portrayed in this book, compared to other works of vintage juvenile fiction: positively, if with a slight and probably inevitable shade of condescension. In the first chapter, Paula is invited to her Hungarian friend Anna's name day. Considering the invitation, Mothe' Dear says to Gran'ma, "Mrs. Hredlika is a very nice woman and an immaculate housekeeper...When her husband was so terribly injured last Winter...I went to the house with John several times when he made his calls. The whole family, struck me as pleasant, kindly, law-abiding people, the sort of citizens we need. I think Paula might go, don't you? It would be an interesting experience." As indeed it proves to be; Paula is made welcome and gets a window into another culture.
A bit later on, after Paula complains to her grandmother about how their town is ugly because of the mills, she gets a long reply about the history of her great grandfather's farm:
"Mill Harbor isn't beautiful now, I know, dear. But once it must have been quite lovely, in a wild wind-swept way. There were hills and sand dunes and forests where the Potawatomi Indians had their villages." Gran'ma pottered about, picking dahlias, adding long sprigs of mint to her bouquet, Paula close beside her.
"You mean right around here, Gran'ma?"
"Yes, I've heard my husband's mother -- she would have been your great-grandmother -- tell how she always prepared more food for the meals than was needed because usually an Indian brave or two would drop in to share it."
"Do you think she was ever afraid?"
"No, I never heard her say she was. The Potawatomis were friendly almost always, but as greedy as spoiled children, and they did have appetites."
"Where are they now? Where did they all go?"
"They were forced to leave this section and move west of the Mississippi. When I came here, many years later, every now and then an Indian family would come straggling by. After a while, though, no more came."
After describing how Paula's great-grandfather arranged for farmers from Holland, Germany and Poland to come over and rent parcels of his land, paying their passage, Gran'ma continues:
I hope as you grow up, Paula, that you will remember not to take too much pride in your 'pioneer family.' You will hear much about it from time to time. The pioneers themselves deserve all the credit, not we who simply followed in the easy trail they broke for us. Many of our neighbors here in Mill harbor are immigrants, which is only another name for pioneer. They too are breaking trails, not through forests but through a new language, new customs. Many of the finest things we have here in American have been brought to us by those very pioneers. The Indians who were here before us made living very hard for us. We were here before the Mullers and Koepkes and Hredlikas and the Czajkowskys--"
Paula lifted a brown furry caterpillar to her palm and watched it move like a tiny kitten around her thumb. "I guess I know what you mean," she said. "you mean we're to be like other pioneers and not like Indians."
"Exactly. And just so, we must take pride in what Mill Harbor is doing for the nation, even if it is sooty and not very beautiful anymore."
There's so much to unpack here, more than I have time or inclination to! It's such a mix of progressive and reactionary thought. I can't help thinking that it's a pity that the present-day descendants of the Eastern European immigrants described in this book weren't taught by Gran'mas of their own to respect the pioneering efforts of more recent newcomers. Of course, quite possibly Mothe' dear and Gran'ma themselves might not have thought that people of other races and cultures further removed from their own than Eastern Europe were "the sort of citizens we need." I have a little theory that by the 1930s, in the wake of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South, and at a time when laws restricting Chinese immigration and citizenship were in place, authors like Vance and others well respected in her day had a sort of nostalgia for the waves of (by that time, mostly acclimatized) European immigrants of the 19th century. I do have a sense that this book portrays them far more positively than many that I've read from the late 19th and early 20th century. I'd have to do a lot more reading, though, to actually assert this was the case.
When I read the synopsis for Paula, I groaned a little seeing that a mill strike would feature in the book. I made an assumption, based on my familiarity with older children's books, that the strikers would be portrayed as selfish and lazy foreigners getting in the way of the progress of American industry. Vance intrigued me again though, not by being pro-labor, but by being carefully neutral. Cousin Ellis, making an extended visit to the family explains to Paula what a strike is as they stitch items together for a charity bazarre in aid of the families who are striking and says, "We do not know which side is right in this strike. We only know that helpless children and sick old people are hungry and must be fed. So we do what we can."
There's a sequel to this book, which I'll also be reading, Paula Goes Away to School. It's been decided that Paula will board at a school in Chicago so that she'll have companions who speak "pure English," and so she can have singing lessons. On reading the prospectus for her new boarding school, she muses:
Only six girls! Paula read their names. Frances Borden, Jane Mallory, Margaret Evans, Helen Dick, Marjorie Northrup, Doris Mead. Nice names, names that might have come out of a story book, but not a single Betja, Jana, Anna, Katia, Rosie or Olga. Something, she could not say just what, troubled Paula. The name 'Paula Madden' fitted so comfortably between 'Helen Dick' and Marjorie Northrup.' The name 'Katia Modrovich' did not. But it should. She must talk this over with Gran'ma. It needed explaining, like the pioneers and Indians.
It's books like these that make me feel justified in saying that the vintage children's books that are my weakness are often well worth reading if only for the social history.
It's an episodic story -- the book's goodreads description lists some of those episodes -- and I found it something of a chore to read (especially because of Paula's lamentable habit of addressing her mother as "Mothe' Dear"), but the part of my brain that still thinks it's in college immediately latched on to the topic of how immigrants are portrayed in this book, compared to other works of vintage juvenile fiction: positively, if with a slight and probably inevitable shade of condescension. In the first chapter, Paula is invited to her Hungarian friend Anna's name day. Considering the invitation, Mothe' Dear says to Gran'ma, "Mrs. Hredlika is a very nice woman and an immaculate housekeeper...When her husband was so terribly injured last Winter...I went to the house with John several times when he made his calls. The whole family, struck me as pleasant, kindly, law-abiding people, the sort of citizens we need. I think Paula might go, don't you? It would be an interesting experience." As indeed it proves to be; Paula is made welcome and gets a window into another culture.
A bit later on, after Paula complains to her grandmother about how their town is ugly because of the mills, she gets a long reply about the history of her great grandfather's farm:
"Mill Harbor isn't beautiful now, I know, dear. But once it must have been quite lovely, in a wild wind-swept way. There were hills and sand dunes and forests where the Potawatomi Indians had their villages." Gran'ma pottered about, picking dahlias, adding long sprigs of mint to her bouquet, Paula close beside her.
"You mean right around here, Gran'ma?"
"Yes, I've heard my husband's mother -- she would have been your great-grandmother -- tell how she always prepared more food for the meals than was needed because usually an Indian brave or two would drop in to share it."
"Do you think she was ever afraid?"
"No, I never heard her say she was. The Potawatomis were friendly almost always, but as greedy as spoiled children, and they did have appetites."
"Where are they now? Where did they all go?"
"They were forced to leave this section and move west of the Mississippi. When I came here, many years later, every now and then an Indian family would come straggling by. After a while, though, no more came."
After describing how Paula's great-grandfather arranged for farmers from Holland, Germany and Poland to come over and rent parcels of his land, paying their passage, Gran'ma continues:
I hope as you grow up, Paula, that you will remember not to take too much pride in your 'pioneer family.' You will hear much about it from time to time. The pioneers themselves deserve all the credit, not we who simply followed in the easy trail they broke for us. Many of our neighbors here in Mill harbor are immigrants, which is only another name for pioneer. They too are breaking trails, not through forests but through a new language, new customs. Many of the finest things we have here in American have been brought to us by those very pioneers. The Indians who were here before us made living very hard for us. We were here before the Mullers and Koepkes and Hredlikas and the Czajkowskys--"
Paula lifted a brown furry caterpillar to her palm and watched it move like a tiny kitten around her thumb. "I guess I know what you mean," she said. "you mean we're to be like other pioneers and not like Indians."
"Exactly. And just so, we must take pride in what Mill Harbor is doing for the nation, even if it is sooty and not very beautiful anymore."
There's so much to unpack here, more than I have time or inclination to! It's such a mix of progressive and reactionary thought. I can't help thinking that it's a pity that the present-day descendants of the Eastern European immigrants described in this book weren't taught by Gran'mas of their own to respect the pioneering efforts of more recent newcomers. Of course, quite possibly Mothe' dear and Gran'ma themselves might not have thought that people of other races and cultures further removed from their own than Eastern Europe were "the sort of citizens we need." I have a little theory that by the 1930s, in the wake of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South, and at a time when laws restricting Chinese immigration and citizenship were in place, authors like Vance and others well respected in her day had a sort of nostalgia for the waves of (by that time, mostly acclimatized) European immigrants of the 19th century. I do have a sense that this book portrays them far more positively than many that I've read from the late 19th and early 20th century. I'd have to do a lot more reading, though, to actually assert this was the case.
When I read the synopsis for Paula, I groaned a little seeing that a mill strike would feature in the book. I made an assumption, based on my familiarity with older children's books, that the strikers would be portrayed as selfish and lazy foreigners getting in the way of the progress of American industry. Vance intrigued me again though, not by being pro-labor, but by being carefully neutral. Cousin Ellis, making an extended visit to the family explains to Paula what a strike is as they stitch items together for a charity bazarre in aid of the families who are striking and says, "We do not know which side is right in this strike. We only know that helpless children and sick old people are hungry and must be fed. So we do what we can."
There's a sequel to this book, which I'll also be reading, Paula Goes Away to School. It's been decided that Paula will board at a school in Chicago so that she'll have companions who speak "pure English," and so she can have singing lessons. On reading the prospectus for her new boarding school, she muses:
Only six girls! Paula read their names. Frances Borden, Jane Mallory, Margaret Evans, Helen Dick, Marjorie Northrup, Doris Mead. Nice names, names that might have come out of a story book, but not a single Betja, Jana, Anna, Katia, Rosie or Olga. Something, she could not say just what, troubled Paula. The name 'Paula Madden' fitted so comfortably between 'Helen Dick' and Marjorie Northrup.' The name 'Katia Modrovich' did not. But it should. She must talk this over with Gran'ma. It needed explaining, like the pioneers and Indians.
It's books like these that make me feel justified in saying that the vintage children's books that are my weakness are often well worth reading if only for the social history.
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