the langhornes of virginia, plus intermittent rage

I’ve had such good luck with my recent random selection of “Over the Edge of the World,” and a few others that I thought I’d do it again — just read something based on gut reaction, instinct. Not based on anyone’s recommendation or burning personal desire. Just … because. Because the title strikes me — as it did with the Magellan book — or because I like the cover or because I say, “Hey, I don’t know anything about THIS. I’m going to read it.” It’s just my own peculiar, spontaneous experiment. Go with the gut. Even if my reason jumps in and says, “Uh, Tray, are ya SURE you want to read that one?” I mean, I thought that about Magellan and I literally cannot stop talking about it to anyone who will listen! I’ve gotten one of my dear old queens at The Beanhouse totally hooked on the book, too. We talk about it constantly. I see him and say: “Okay, Jack. Where are you now? What part are you at?” “Oh, they just had a mutiny! How can it get any worse?” “Oh. OH. You have NO idea! It’s about to get SO much worse and SO much better!” And then I have to stop myself from saying too much and giving it all away, so we just prattle on about the WONDER of the whole damn thing. That whole INSANE journey. (And I will write some more Magellan posts, but only a few more, because you really should go out and get the book yourself!!)

Okay. Hm. So that was a full-on tangent. Whatever. All that to say I’m loving my “go with the gut” choices in books these days. And it’s brought me another good’un: “Five Sisters” by James Fox.

“Five Sisters” is a biography following the insanely influential Langhorne family of Virginia during the years after the Civil War. Well, following mostly the sisters, hence the title, haha-blah … bear with me here. I’m all over the map today. SOON we’ll get to the part where I WILL JUST QUOTE FROM THE DAMN BOOK, I SWEAR!!

I’m embarrassed to admit — but see if that stops me! — that I was drawn to this book by the pictures of the five sisters on the cover, all such beautiful women, but mostly because one of them was wearing a crown. I dunno. She struck some 5-year-old girl chord in me, that beautiful woman with the crown. I looked at her and wondered who the heck she was. A woman from Virginia wearing a crown? I had to know who she was. And now I know. And I will tell you momentarily. Or I might forget because, dammit, I may have to live in a box in the canyon and I cannot think straight!!

(Why am I yelling at you fine, lovely people?? Sorry.)

Okay.

These five sisters — Lizzie, Irene, Nancy, Phyllis, and Nora — were just ALL THAT during the Reconstruction years. Belles of the ball, all of them. In the most literal, old-fashioned sense — Belles. Men flocked from all over just to get a glance of one of these sisters, so legendary was their beauty, so desirable were their hands in marriage. But by far the most beautiful, most sought-after of these Sister Belles was the second sister, Irene.

Irene Langhorne.

Who married Charles Dana Gibson.

And was his model for The Gibson Girl.

And that is she in the picture above, Miss Irene Langhorne.

Sister of Nancy Langhorne, later Lady Nancy Astor, the woman with the crown.

But for now, Irene.

The author, whose grandmother was sister Phyllis, describes the Belle culture and Irene’s rise to Super Belle-dom:

Whatever the state of their finances, the Langhornes went each summer to White Sulphur Springs, the most fashionable of the hot water spas across the Blue Ridge in the Allegheny Mountains. The spas had been the center of southern glamour and the marriage market since 1830, particularly “The White,” which to the sisters was a place of outlandish fantasy. It was their only contact with the outside world: a gigantic doll’s house dedicated to beaux and Belles, to highly organized courtly activity.

…….

The adulation of the Belles had a direct relation to Virginia’s sense of defeat, the sense of injustice that could hardly be addressed in conversation. They had an electrifying effect on Richmond society. Greatest of all, until Irene ousted her, was Miss May Handy, who undoubtedly possessed star quality. Nancy and Phyllis knew everything about her: how she was schooled and watched over like an athlete; how her diet was prescribed; how, exceptionally for Richmond, she lived alone with her maid for company; how she was too grand for any beau to approach her. That was the crucial, misleading lesson: that love could only be pure and good if unsatisfied — the Provencal romance. “Yearning” and “loyalty” were the key words. The little girls of Richmond would rush out into Franklin Street to see her pass, wearing her bunch of “May Handy violets” and “smelling delicious,” then run around the block to meet her again. They chanted a skipping rhyme:

5 cents for cake
5 cents for candy
15 cents
Kiss May Handy

……..

Irene was hurled into a regime that required immense stamina to survive. There was little opportunity for sleep. The balls ended at 3:00 a.m. Riding began at seven. There was “Treadmilling” after breakfast — trooping around four or five abreast, making dates for the “Germans” (the cotillions), which were held in the morning from eleven to one and again in the evening. No refreshments were served at these dances, and in the gaps there were “watermelon struggles,” “bowling parties,” “candy stews,” and photography sessions. The Germans, held in broad daylight in the middle of the morning in evening dress, were something new to a northern eye. One reporter wrote, “The effect produced by so many colors in perpetual motion beneath a strong light is very bewildering.”

Unlike May Handy, Irene had never been groomed for her part. She had simply emerged from Mr. Langhorne’s circus — no makeup, no attendant hairdresser — and was one day taken onto the dance floor at The White. She had been noticed by the New York papers while she was still a schoolgirl, to the annoyance of her father, who threatened to go to New York to shoot the editor. (ed.: Sorry! I’m laughing! Their father is hysterical to me.) “She is tall and fair,” wrote the New York Times in the offending passage, “and dances like a dream. Her carriage is queenly and her complexion perfect.” She was taller than her sisters, serene, upright, with a dimple on her chin and (fashionably) “violet” eyes. She had the rounded hips and the forward-weighted bosom of the classic Belle, the bosom that tapered to a twenty-inch waist, of which she would say, coyly, “The beaux were supposed to be able to put their hands around it. But my Father never let them.” She had a luminous quality. She “lit up” a room.

Next installment: Irene and Charles and what Father thinks of the whole derned thing. Hahahahahaha!!!!