Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown Read online

  Betsy and Tacy

  Go Downtown

  Maud Hart Lovelace

  Illustrated by Lois Lenski

  For HELEN

  and the other inheritors

  of Hill Street

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Epigraph

  1 The Maple Tree

  2 The Horseless Carriage

  3 Winona’s Tickets

  4 More about Winona’s Tickets

  5 Uncle Tom’s Cabin

  6 Betsy’s Desk

  7 A Trip to the Library

  8 Mrs. Poppy

  9 The Pink Stationery

  10 Christmas Shopping

  11 Mrs. Poppy’s Party

  12 Three Telephone Calls

  13 Rip Van Winkle

  14 The Curtain Goes Up

  About the Author

  About Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Foreword

  One Saturday morning when I was about twelve years old, I woke with a wonderful plan. The evening before, I had finished rereading my very favorite library book. It was Downtown (later retitled by the publisher as Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown) by Maud Hart Lovelace. It was the third time I had borrowed the book from the library, and when the two-week lending period was over, I would have to part with this treasured book once again. Hence my plan: I would copy the words of the story for myself.

  This was the era before inexpensive paperback editions of popular books for children. And this was the era before the existence of photocopy machines (and laws forbidding the copying of entire books). My father was an ardent bibliophile, and so I suppose I might have thought to ask for my own copy of Downtown. But my father’s idea of going to a bookstore was browsing in dimly lit and dusty secondhand shops. I often went with him and had the thrill of buying one or two old books for a nickel or dime each. Yet, somehow, I could not imagine a copy of Downtown in one of those shops.

  So I took a large notebook and a freshly sharpened pencil, and carefully, in my best cursive writing, I began. The second paragraph that I wrote was less neat than the first. By the time I completed copying only the first page, my hand was very tired. I looked at my smudged paper and compared it to the clear print of the real book. I realized that even if I ever finished this monumental task which I had set for myself, it would not truly resemble the bound book I held in my hand. Nor would there be any of the charming drawings by Lois Lenski to accompany the text.

  I tore the page from my notebook and gave up. I would just have to wait my turn and continue to borrow Downtown from the library whenever I could find it on the shelf.

  Downtown was not my only favorite book. I loved the entire series about Betsy-Tacy. I had discovered them by chance on the library shelves and at once had fallen in love with Betsy (who was just like me!) and her friends. Betsy’s friends were not like mine. My friends squabbled constantly. Three was not a good number for best friends in the Bronx where I grew up. In fact, very little in the Bronx resembled the idyllic community of Deep Valley. Betsy’s parents never lectured her about the dangers of speaking to strangers. In fact, some of Betsy’s best adventures took place when she spoke to strangers. She even went inside their homes. But more than the refreshing vacation from my own city tenement life, the books offered me a new best friend who was myself and yet not myself.

  At twelve, I already knew that I wanted to be a writer—just like Betsy. At twelve, I entertained my friends with original stories that I wrote out and tried submitting to magazines—just like Betsy. I didn’t have freckles and my teeth weren’t parted in the middle, but I was chunkily built like Betsy and I think I had her “perky smiling face.” That forty years separated my childhood from hers seemed immaterial. We were just alike in every important way.

  I read the Betsy-Tacy books in order as they were published—with one important omission. The New York Public Library did not own Heaven to Betsy when I was growing up. This I later learned (when I was a children’s librarian, working for NYPL myself) was because the matter of Betsy and her sister Julia changing religions was considered too controversial at that time.

  I was in college and employed part time in the public library when the last book in the series was published. I happened to be browsing in the children’s room when I discovered Betsy’s Wedding. I stopped, stunned at the news. If my own sister had gotten married without telling me, I could not have been more surprised (or delighted). I grabbed the book from the library shelf and checked it out. If the children’s librarian was amazed to see someone of my advanced age borrowing the book, she didn’t say. Probably it happened all the time, anyhow.

  The bond I felt with Betsy and Maud Hart Lovelace, her creator and alter ego, was strengthened by personal contacts over the years. In 1949, shortly after my eleventh birthday, I wrote a letter to Mrs. Lovelace. Writing letters to authors was not a classroom assignment in those days, and I don’t remember how I figured out that if I wrote to her in care of her publisher, she might in time receive my letter. In any event, she did, and her response, written in her own hand, made me feel, more than ever, that we were personal friends. In time, I received several other handwritten notes from her.

  Our bond was reinforced one evening when I was glancing at the newspaper. The New York World Telegram, a paper for which my father wrote, had recently merged with the New York Sun. I noticed an article written by Delos Lovelace. I recognized the name immediately because in the front of all the Betsy-Tacy books was a listing of other books by the author, including a couple which she co-authored with Delos Lovelace, her husband. I ran to my father to show him this wonderful new link with my favorite author.

  He reported to his new colleague about my recognition of his name. And that year, at holiday time, I received a gift-wrapped and autographed copy of Maud Hart Lovelace’s newest book, Emily of Deep Valley. I never found out if Mrs. Lovelace sent the book to me via my father or if my father purchased the book and asked her husband to have it signed for me. I think I preferred not knowing so I could pretend to myself that it was the former.

  Growing up in an era when creativity was not praised or fostered in schools, I know that Betsy/Maud was the mentor I needed to encourage me to continue writing. There must be hundreds of writers who can point to the Betsy-Tacy books as a source of inspiration. But it is not just writers who owe a debt to Maud Hart Lovelace. What about the librarians and teachers who grew up reading these books and went on to become as important to the young people they worked with as the librarian and teachers who encouraged Betsy and her friends? And what about the parents who aimed to make their homes as open, warm, and hospitable as that of the Rays? These books gave us goals, consciously and unconsciously.

  Let me mention one last thing: as an adult, I bought myself a copy of Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown.

  —JOHANNA HURWITZ

  “I stepped from plank to plank

  So slow and cautiously;

  The stars about my head I felt

  About my feet the sea.”

  —The Poems of EMILY DICKINSON

  1

  The Maple Tree

  ETSY WAS SITTING in the backyard maple, high among spreading branches that were clothed in rich green except at their tips where they wore the first gold of September. Three branches forked to make a seat, one of them even providing a prop for her back. To her right, within easy reach, was another smaller crotch into which a cigar box had been nailed. This was closed and showed on the cover a plump coquettish lady wearing a Spanish shawl.

  From this lofty retreat Betsy had a splendid view. It did not look toward the Big Hill where she and her
friends Tacy and Tib had had so many adventurous picnics. It looked toward the town. Strictly speaking, her leaf-framed vista was of rooftops going down Hill Street like steps. But Betsy knew whither those steps led.

  Sitting in her maple, she was aware of the town, spread out below, of Front Street where the stores were, of streets lined with the houses of people she did not know, of the Opera House, the Melborn Hotel, the skeleton of the new Carnegie Library, and the High School that her sister Julia and Tacy’s sister Katie now attended. She was aware of the river winding through its spacious valley and of a world, yet unexplored, lying beyond.

  Lifting the lid of the cigar box, Betsy took out a small tablet. It said on the cover, “Ray’s Shoe Store. Wear Queen Quality Shoes.” She took out a pencil, short and well tooth-marked, and chewed it thoughtfully. Then opening the tablet she wrote:

  The Repentance of Lady Clinton

  by Betsy Warrington Ray Author of Her Secret Marriage, The Mystery of the Butternut Tree, A Tress of Golden Hair, Hardly More than a Child. Etc. Etc.

  Chapter One

  Lord Patterson’s Ball

  She had progressed no further when a scratching sound caused her to look down. A red ringleted head was rising toward her. The visitor was Tacy who lived across the street and had been her dear friend for many years. Seven, to be exact, for Betsy and Tacy had started to be friends at Betsy’s fifth birthday party, and now they were both twelve.

  Tacy paused on a limb just below.

  “Is it all right for me to come up?” she asked.

  The perch in the maple tree was Betsy’s private office. Here she thought out stories and poems and wrote them down. Here she kept what she had written in the cigar box that her mother had given her and Tacy had helped her nail to its present place.

  “Of course,” said Betsy. “Why weren’t you in school this afternoon? Why couldn’t you come out to play?”

  “Something awful, something terrible has happened,” Tacy said. She hoisted herself into a crotch near the one in which Betsy was sitting.

  Tacy’s large blue eyes swam with tears. Her lids were red, her freckled cheeks were wet. Betsy put her tablet and pencil into the cigar box and closed the lid with the Spanish lady on it.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  Tacy wiped her eyes on a wet ball of handkerchief.

  “You remember,” she said, “Rena loaned me Lady Audley’s Secret.”

  Betsy nodded.

  “Well … Papa found it.”

  “What happened?”

  Tacy’s eyes overflowed.

  “I had hidden it under the bed. And this noon while we were eating dinner, Mamma told Papa she thought there was a mousehole in our room, and Papa went looking for it, and he found the book.

  “He was furious, but he never dreamed it was mine. He marched down to the table and asked Mary whether she’d been reading it, and she said ‘no.’ And he asked Celia, and she said ‘no.’ And he asked Katie, and she said ‘no.’ And then he came to me and I had to say ‘yes.’”

  Tacy began to sob.

  “Papa said he was amazed and astounded. He said he thought he had brought us up to appreciate good literature. He said there was a set of Dickens in the house, and Shakespeare, and Father Finn, and how did a child of his happen to be reading trash? Then he went out to the kitchen range and lifted the lid and threw it in …”

  “Tacy!”

  “Yes, he did!” wept Tacy. “And now what am I going to tell Rena?” What, indeed!

  Looking down from the maple, Betsy could see Rena contentedly stringing beans on the back doorstep, unconscious of her loss. Rena had come from a farm to help Mrs. Ray. She was young and good-natured, not like Tib’s mother’s hired girl, Matilda, who was old and cross. But even Rena got mad sometimes, and her paper-backed novels were her dearest treasures. She kept them locked in her trunk, and Betsy read them out loud to her evenings when Mr. and Mrs. Ray happened to be out—at their High Fly Whist Club or a lodge dance or prayer meeting. Prompted by the same instinct that had caused Tacy to hide Lady Audley’s Secret under her bed, Betsy had never mentioned these readings to her father and mother. But she had told all the stories to Tacy and Tib and had even persuaded Rena to lend them the books. And now Lady Audley’s Secret had perished in the flames!

  “We’ll have to buy her another one,” said Betsy. “They have those paper-backed books at Cook’s Book Store. I’ve seen them.”

  “But they cost a dime,” answered Tacy through her tears.

  That was true. And a dime, ten cents, was hard to come by, especially when one could not tell for what one needed it.

  “We’ll earn it,” said Betsy stoutly.

  “How?” asked Tacy.

  “Somehow. You’ll see.”

  “Betsy! Tacy!” came a voice from below.

  “It’s Tib,” said Betsy. “Come on up,” she called. And in half a minute a fluff of yellow hair rose into view. Tib swung herself lightly to a seat on a neighboring branch.

  Tib had been friends with Betsy and Tacy almost as long as they had been friends with each other. She lived two blocks away on Pleasant Street in a large chocolate-colored house. Betsy’s house faced Tacy’s at the end of Hill Street. The town ended and the country began there, on a green tree-covered hill that made a beautiful playground for all the neighborhood children. There was hardly a day when Tib did not come to play with Betsy and Tacy.

  She looked anxiously now at Tacy’s tear-stained face.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Tacy’s father found Lady Audley’s Secret under her bed.”

  “And he threw it in the kitchen stove,” said Tacy. “He said it was trash.”

  “Trash!” cried Betsy. “I’m trying to write books just like it.”

  Tib’s round blue eyes grew rounder.

  “What are you going to tell Rena?” she asked.

  “We’re not going to tell her anything,” said Betsy, “until we have a dime to buy her another book.”

  “How are you going to get a dime?” asked Tib.

  “We’re going to earn it,” said Betsy. “But we haven’t quite decided how.”

  The screen door creaked, and they looked down to see Rena with the pan of beans under her arm going into the kitchen. At the same moment they saw something else … Julia, with a boy beside her, walking up Hill Street.

  Julia was fourteen. Her skirt came down to the tops of her shoes. A braid with a curl on the end hung down her back, past her slender, belted waist. She wore a big hat.

  The boy, who wore the uniform of a military school, was carrying her books.

  “It’s a good thing,” said Betsy sarcastically, “that she has Jerry to carry those heavy books.”

  “They’d break her back practically,” said Tacy, “if she had to carry them herself.”

  “Look at him help her up the steps!” jeered Betsy. “It’s too bad she’s so weak.”

  “This going around with boys makes me sick,” said Tacy.

  “I like Herbert Humphreys,” said Tib.

  It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so.

  “Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert,” said Betsy, who liked him too.

  “He wears cute clothes,” said Tacy, blushing.

  Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants.

  “Why does Jerry wear a uniform?” asked Tib, peering down.

  “He goes away to school. To Cox Military. It hasn’t opened yet. And every day he walks up to the high school to walk home with Julia. Silly!” Betsy gave a sniff. “But he’s nice. I’ll say that much. He’s mighty nice to me. Always giving me money for candy … Tacy!” She broke off in a shout. “Money! A dime! Ten cents!”

  “Of course,” cried Tacy, a smile breaking over her face.

  “What is it? What are you talking about?” asked Tib in bewilderment.

  “We need money, don�
�t we?” asked Betsy. “Well, here’s our chance to earn some.”

  “But how?” demanded Tib, as Betsy swung downward.

  “By being nuisances,” cried Tacy, following.

  “Do you get paid for being nuisances?”

  “For not being nuisances.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Betsy hung to a limb to explain.

  “Jerry likes to talk to Julia without us sticking around. So sometimes he gives us money to go to the store for candy.”

  “Oh,” said Tib, and slid nimbly to the ground.

  Down on the ground, Tib did not look to be ten, much less her actual age of twelve. She was dainty and small. With her short yellow hair, round eyes and rosebud mouth, she looked like a doll. She wore a long-waisted pink lawn dress and a pink bow in her hair. Betsy and Tacy wore sailor suits.

  Betsy was not so tall as Tacy but she was taller than she had been at ten. She wore her brown braids crossed in back and tied with perky ribbons which somehow matched her perky smiling face.

  Tacy was slim and long of limb. Her face was still crowded with freckles, but they didn’t matter when she shook back her curls and looked out shyly with blue Irish eyes.

  All three were barefoot.

  Single file they padded softly around the corner of the yellow cottage. A vine was turning red over the small front porch. Julia sat in the hammock there and Jerry sat on the railing staring into her slim wistful face.

  “Why does he look at her like that? She’s only Julia,” Tacy whispered.

  “Don’t ask me,” answered Betsy in disgust.

  “Why does Julia look so sad?” asked Tib.

  “She’s just putting that look on. Thinks it’s pretty,” Betsy said. Scornfully she led the way to the porch.

  Jerry turned around and smiled. He had a friendly, toothy smile in a brown pleasant face. “Hello, kids,” he said.

  “Hello, children,” said Julia languidly.

  “Kids! Children!” said Betsy, not quite under her breath.