Chapter I: Front Matter

[Dustcover]
[Cover]

B O O K S B Y
B O O T H T A R K I N G T O N

ALICE ADAMS
BEASLEY’S CHRISTMAS PARTY
BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN
CHERRY
CONQUEST OF CANAAN
GENTLE JULIA
HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE
HIS OWN PEOPLE
IN THE ARENA
MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE
PENROD
PENROD AND SAM
RAMSEY MILHOLLAND
SEVENTEEN
THE BEAUTIFUL LADY
THE FASCINATING STRANGER AND OTHER STORIES
THE FLIRT
THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA
THE GUEST OF QUESNAY
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS
THE MAN FROM HOME
THE MIDLANDER
THE TURMOIL
THE TWO VANREVELS
WOMEN

WOMEN

BY
BOOTH TARKINGTON

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1925

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &
COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT,
1924, 1925, BY BOOTH TARKINGTON.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

CONTENTS

PAGE
PREAMBLE ................................... vii
CHAPTER
I. MRS. DODGE AND MRS. CROMWELL....... 1
II. A LADY ACROSS THE STREET........... 15
III. PERVERSITY OF A TELEPHONE.......... 24
IV. A GREAT MAN’S WIFE................. 33
V. ONE OF MRS. CROMWELL’S DAUGHTERS... 47
VI. SALLIE EALING...................... 63
VII. NAPOLEON WAS A LITTLE MAN.......... 79
VIII. MRS. DODGE’S ONLY DAUGHTER......... 90
IX. MRS. DODGE’S HUSBAND............... 104
X. LILY’S ALMOST FIRST ENGAGEMENT..... 110
XI. MRS. CROMWELL’S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER.. 126
XII. HER HAPPIEST HOUR.................. 142
XIII. HEARTBREAK......................... 164
XIV. MRS. DODGE’S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR... 172
XV. MRS. DODGE DECLINES TO TELL........ 182
XVI. MRS. LESLIE BRAITHWAITE’S HUSBAND.. 206
XVII. “DOLLING”.......................... 216
XVIII. LILY’S FRIEND ADA.................. 223
XIX. PARENTS IN DARKNESS................ 246
XX. DAMSEL DARK, DAMSEL FAIR........... 254
XXI. MRS. CROMWELL’S NIECE.............. 263
XXII. WALLFLOWER......................... 275
XXIII. THE STRANGE MIRROR................. 290
XXIV. TRANSFIGURATION.................... 297
XXV. GLAMOUR CAN BE KEPT................ 309
XXVI. DESERT SAND........................ 314
XXVII. MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT................ 327
XXVIII. A PUBLIC MOCKERY................... 345
XXIX. MRS. CROMWELL’S OLDEST DAUGHTER.... 362
XXX. MRS. CROMWELL’S SONS-IN-LAW........ 400
XXXI. THE ANNIVERSARY DINNER............. 410

PREAMBLE

“BUT why not?” Mrs. Dodge said, leading the “Discussion” at the Woman’s Saturday Club after the reading of Mrs. Cromwell’s essay, “Women as Revealed in Some Phases of Modern Literature.” “Why shouldn’t something of the actual life of such women as ourselves be the subject of a book?” Mrs. Dodge inquired. “Mrs. Cromwell’s paper has pointed out to us that in a novel a study of women must have a central theme, must focus upon a central figure or ‘heroine,’ and must present her as a principal participant in a centralized conflict or drama of some sort, in relation to a limited group of other ‘characters.’ Now, so far as I can see, my own life has no such centralizations, and I’m pretty sure Mrs. Cromwell’s hasn’t, either, unless she is to be considered merely as a mother; but she has other important relations in life besides her relations to her three daughters, just as I have others besides that I bear to my one daughter. In fact, I can’t find any central theme in Mrs. Cromwell’s life or my own; I can’t find any centralized drama in her life or mine, and I doubt if many of you can find such things in yours. Our lives seem to be made up of apparently haphazard episodes, some meaningless, others important, and although we do live principally with our families and friends and neighbours, I find that people I hardly know have sometimes walked casually into my life, and influenced it, and then walked out of it as casually as they came in. All in all, I can’t see in our actual lives the cohesion that Mrs. Cromwell says is the demand of art. It appears to me that this very demand might tend to the damage of realism, which I take to mean lifelikeness and to be the most important demand of all. So I say: Why shouldn’t a book about women, or about a type of women, take for its subject some of the actual thoughts and doings of women like ourselves? Why should such a book be centralized and bound down to a single theme, a single conflict, a single heroine? The lives of most of us here consist principally of our thoughts and doings in relation to our children, our neighbours, and the people who casually walk into our lives and our children’s and neighbours’ lives and out again. It seems to me a book about us should be concerned with all of these almost as much as with ourselves.”

“You haven’t mentioned husbands,” Mrs. Cromwell suggested. “Wouldn’t they——”

“They should be included,” Mrs. Dodge admitted. “But I would have husbands and suitors represented in their proper proportion; that is to say, only in the proportion that they affect _our_ thoughts and doings. In challenging the rules for centralization that you have propounded, Mrs. Cromwell, I do not propose that all rules of whatever nature should be thrown over. One in particular I should hold most advisable.”

“What rule is it?” a member of the club inquired, for at this point Mrs. Dodge paused and the expression of her mouth was somewhat grim.

“It is that a book about women should not be too long,” Mrs. Dodge replied. “Especially if it should be by a man, he would be wise to use brevity as a means of concealing what he doesn’t know. And besides,” she added, more leniently, “by brevity, he might hope to placate us a little. It might be his best form of apology.”

W O M E N