Alice “Sally” Ballou – BERTHA BALLOU LETTERS

I have come to the conclusion that Archy is awfully good to look at

To Bertha from Alice “Sally” – January 13, 1921

[Note: Sally is Bertha’s younger sister]

Box 173 R.M.W.C.
Lynchburg, VA

Dear Bertha,

Please ‘scuse me if I don’t seem to have written for a long time. I’ll try to reform.

I suppose you want to know what happened during the holidays so I will write as detailed an account of it as I can.

I got into Washington a little after four on Wednesday the 23rd. (It is awfully hard to realize that it was only three weeks ago yesterday.) That evening, Eleanor Dunne and I decided that we would like to see Madge and Robert so we called up and suggested that they come over. They weren’t at home. They were at a pageant over at school so we promptly announced to Mrs. Dunne that she should have the pleasure of taking us to Western. We departed forthwith and saw many people. Archy Atkinson and Bob Peary are much improved by officer uniforms (they are captains this year) and clearer complexions. I have come to the conclusion that Archy is awfully good to look at. We also saw Bob Armstrong draped artistically in portiere to represent Savonarola. Well, he looked alright but Eleanor and I couldn’t help laughing at the idea of Bob as a priest. Lady Jane orated at great length. Van Moseley counted money frantically for Miss ______ as she sold tickets. We had a gorgeous time.

…to Mrs. Armstrong by her innocent son who didn’t know that he had done that at least twice before. Next morning, Eleanor and I went back again and went to assembly. Everybody was there (even William) and poor Francis Birch flushed furiously and refused ________ speech and Bernard Spittle and Francis Corey sang and the R.M. member of the faculty welcomed me with open arms and – as usual – William and I scrapped or rather William’s feelings were hurt. He, not being an alumnus, flatly refused to come up on the platform and I being an alumna was taken by the hand and led to see that I got there. Therefore, William saw me (for the first time) and desired a smile so he sat and stared at me to make me look at him and when I did he for some reason looked the other way and didn’t see the smile I gave him. Then I tried to make him look at me and William growing suddenly modest decided that I was looking at the beautiful Captain Archy who sat squarely in front of William and William waxed ruthful and said so later on in the day and William made more kinds of a silliness of himself during the holidays than any one I saw.

Bertha! A member of the ________ staff has just called and asked for my last essay and asked…
…then William and I called on the Peary’s. When we got home, tonight we to play billiards. Monday, I went over to school and stayed to watch drill at the request of Archie, Robert P., Bob A., and Van. We went out to supper again and William took Phoebe and myself to the Knickerbocker and dumped us as he had to study. That evening, he and I had more or less of a rough house and it ended in his returning me my sacred cigar butt (Bob’s) and reclaiming one of the silver chain bracelet that you gave me over in the islands. I don’t know whether I’ve said goodbye to it forever now or not. I’m going to try negotiating to get it back. Tuesday, I came home. (I mean back to school.) Since then, I have been regretting that I ever was born and all the rest of the post-vacation stuff.

Dr. Hamaker’s baby died Christmas Eve.

We have several inches of snow here which fell Sunday and we have had a flurry or two since.

I am causing much excitement by the number of pages which of love written to you as I guess I’d better stop. Please write and give me some good advice. I need a big sister badly. I know that I’m infinitely more discrete than most of the girls here but I don’t know about some of things I have told you of ______ here and it is easier tell you than Mamma. Also you know the boys more intimately than she does. Anyhow, I want some advice. William Wadsworth said that if this letter sounds crazy, a red-headed northern girl has been in the room all the time that I wrote.

Lots of love.

From,
Sally

It was a $16.00 hat and I paid $1.95 for it

To Bertha from Alice (Sally) – January 17, 1921

Miss Bertha Ballou 
Elks, Nevada

Box 173 R.M.W.C 
Lynchburg, Virginia 

Dear Bertha,

I got a nice long letter from you this morning and thought I better answer it while I could. I have two exams next Monday (both in Latin) so I won’t have much time until exams are over.

Please tell me about the select affair of January 13th.

I’m glad Mamma is going to have a pussy. That will certainly give her a great deal of amusement.

Bertha, you say that you and Charles Russell are working hard on the (horizontal line). The (horizontal line) looks like this “Polob” and I can’t make it out. I wish you wouldn’t tell me such interesting tales about everybody. You make me desire to get up and leave immediately and come and teach the queer creature the why’s and wherefor’s of math and physics. Now, Bertha, don’t under any circumstance, think that I mean to do it but wouldn’t it be funny to see Papa’s expression if I told him that I was going to stop college and travel next year. Me, I wouldn’t leave college now if it weren’t for that wretch Herbert Lipscomb PhD, I would be fairly happy. Even he won’t be able to make me uncomfortable a week from now (all _____ will be over by this time in that _____ his exam is a week from today.)

[Note: The Randolph College library would be named after the teacher. “Herbert C. Lipscomb, Ph.D., had been the head of the Latin Department at R–MWC for 45 years at the time of the naming, and was very active in many campus activities, especially those concerning the fine arts. Dr. Lipscomb was one of the most loved and respected teachers our campus has ever seen. It is particularly appropriate that the library honors his name because of his unrelenting love of knowledge, as well as the pursuit of “the life more abundant,” as evidenced by this quote from one of his students.”]

Miss Powell is the biggest nuisance at this moment. The Pill (ess) thinks that I should write a brief. The whole English department has “brief fever” and I don’t see it that way. [Note: The slang term “pill” comes up more than once in these letters. It’s defined as: “an unpleasant person, or a person who is difficult to deal with.”]

I went to town today and bought my next winter’s hat. I’d seen just what I wanted before Christmas but it was gone but I found a pretty navy blue velvet with a bird’s wing on the brim which is quite becoming, and it will do until I find just what I want. It was a $16.00 hat and I paid $1.95 for it. The one I wanted most was $17.50. All the hats in that store were $1.95 today. It is a nice hat and of a type which you don’t tire of easily.

This is a general mix up but you are supposed to get the meaning as best you can. If my sealing wax doesn’t please you, let me say that it is so queer I had to see what it looks like. I haven’t much of it. Please tell me whether or not you like my wax. I’ll send you some back very soon, the store is all out of it right now.

Love from Sally

I want to see my crazy roommate

To Bertha from Alice (“Sally”) – February 5, 1921

Box 173 – R.M.W.C. 
Lynchburg, Virginia 

Dear Bertha,

Exams are over!!!!! I don’t know the results yet except that I made 71 on the course in Livy (not good but passing which is better than I hoped) and 89 on Latin and I don’t know what I made in the course. I was mighty glad to get your letter. Yes’m, I am very careful, you see the beauty of my letters to Bob is that they are not to Jack, they are to Bob and they relate the effect of the last letters. They are perfectly open and not the least bit more affectionate that they were before. Simply there are some girls whom I occasionally permit to censor my mail and one who does it without permit and the letters are for their delectation. Bob merely desires to hear what they bring forth. Is that alright?

I wrote the other day and asked William for my bracelet and he sent it. I wrote him a very brief note of thanks. I think that will end that chapter in my history for a while. They way he see’s fit to write me but he hasn’t since Christmas (although I sent him his blocks) and there was not a word with the bracelet. I scarcely know whether I would answer him if he did since he overlooked the blocks episode. Advice needed. Intelligence office, what would you prescribe? It would be better to drop him neatly I think because that will shut him up for a while with something to think about. Then, if I ever met him again, he could have a fair to reinstate himself. He is altogether, too spoiled, however, to worry about. Isn’t it too bad? I wish he had stayed nice. He was eighteen yesterday, I suppose. He is enveloped in tobacco smoke now. He was to be allowed to smoke when he was eighteen. I believe he once told me he was going to swipe his mother’s picture of me and take it to his room when he was eighteen. He would not admit that now, I fear. I wonder what happened, we didn’t fight. In fact, we thought we were friends but when that little box came day before yesterday without even a word in it, I was perfectly certain that everything was all off, even more certain that the fact that he never wrote about the blocks made me. I wish I knew. As I said, advice is solicited.

I have a new roommate who has been here all day so I hear but has not honored me with any message nor appeared at all. She came while I was a History exam and dumped her bags and has been off with some frat girls from Weat ever since. I have straightened the room and now at home to roommates. I hate her because of the looks of her bags and because she can’t be like my Lucy baby. Well, I must go see if the mail is in.

Not a letter! Wow!

I want to see my crazy roommate. She’ll arrive someday however and I know I won’t like her.
Well, I’ve got to stop now and dress. I am going to primp for the “it” in honor of exams being over.

Love,

Sally

P.S. Please vote purple paper am _____.

Dr. Zdonowiz is a blessed old dear

To Bertha from Alice “Sally” –

(Date is approximate)

…coming but it certainly is nice think of so many of them going in. Oh! Yes, Francis Birch goes in from Maryland and Mason, I suppose, will make up a _____ appointment. In fort, he may be William’s first alternative. Your know that they were working for the same appointment. Well, about November the it of a senator discovered that all his men were at the academy already and he had no appointments this year. William promptly tackled another man and got the principal without competition and the senator says that about ten minutes after he mailed W.F. his papers, in came another mail and flooded him with pleas for the thing. But William has it.

Did I tell you that at Christmas, I saw Charles Palmer of Western ’20 who is a plebe? He was on sick leave and I felt quite tickled when he singled me out a big dance to talk to (he wasn’t dancing) because we hardly knew each other at school and I didn’t suppose he would recognize me.
Oh, yes! While I’m talking about boys, I may as well mention that the other day I was taking a walk ‘round the campus and I saw Isabelle Crank and a man sitting under the Odd Tree, (a tree near the summer house) well, I didn’t desire to worry Crank so soon after Odd _____ to be seen near the Odd Tree, so I stalked off across the grass for East Hall and so when the man left Crank came and told me that he was an illustrator and that when I passed, he had made me many compliments including that I had more poise than any girls he’d seen in the college. That is what friend Sally gets for pulling in her chin and holding her head up when there is a man in sight. I’ll try it this summer. Wasn’t that a nice compliment? (I think I have been spelling “compliment” as if it were the object of an intransitive verb but it doesn’t make much difference. I don’t know which is which and hope you don’t think this one is correct.)

It now becomes necessary to read my letter over and see what I haven’t said. Not having said anything I will proceed, although there is nothing to say but having written over an ounce already. I can’t waste postage by not writing a full 2 ounces.

The “bunch” gave Hades a birthday party in the University Women’s Club rooms at G.W. and Gwen and I were the only absentees. The cake was not full of cotton this time but the presents were as queer as ever. Poor Hades, it surely is a nuisance to be an April fool baby.

Alice Hersey went to Camp Devon for her Easter and enjoyed herself muchly. Said it was so long since she’d seen a waiter that she hardly knew how to behave at the mess. Thank goodness! Bessy _____ we in training but I’ll probably disgrace the family someway or other. Virginia is still progressing and still fixes the corner table with her glossy eye. I can fairly see what would happen if she were called, “Virgin-i-a.” Dr. Ayres has taken a great liking for me and button-holes me in the _____ frequently for long conversations and then, he winds up with, “How is Miss Bertha now?” I haven’t met Mrs. B nor Virgin-i-a so far.

Jenny Joues is very homesick and unhappy and calls down blessings (?) on France and all things French but especially the heating apparatus, she was recovering from _____ when she wrote and evidently had a grouch and her best friend had just left for the Riviera and Gwen wanted to go too long enough to warm her toes. In fact, she agrees with Papa upon the climate of France.
Miss Bowen is alright but not as strong as she was before her operation at Christmas time.
Miss Powel says I’m going to make 93 in English this time but I expect to flunk in everything else, that is. I’m worried about History and Dr. Arnold has gotten my record all tied up. (Told me I made 88 and turned in 80) and I fear I haven’t made A in math and maybe not even B and I think my Bible grade will be C instead of B and my daily work in Latin has gone all to pieces and my written work has taken a sudden and annoying flight up to D and what the average is I don’t know and I don’t believe Dr. Lipscomb does. Dr. Zdonowiz is a blessed old dear and I’m jealous of the Red Cross nurse that he is going to marry. He says he’ll put me in French III next year no matter what happens and if I want to take an exam on the IIB work (and he is sure I’ll pass) he’ll give me credit for it on my degree. And Dr. Lipscomb is a pill. He wants a poem, and evidently intends to have it. And it must be a literal translation of one of his plegéd old odes and it can’t be in free verse, nor even blank verse. Wow, isn’t he awful? Large chance he stands of getting such an article from me. Wow! Wow! Wow!

Oh! Yes, I am writing a description of character by conversation now for Miss Powell and I have chosen for my topic Mrs. Buttler discussing Mrs. Black. I have sketched Mrs. Buttler in a way which convulses my friends and which is, I think, true to life and I have long since found out that if I can once get Miss Powel giggling over one of my papers that is sure to be an A forthcoming. The result is that a person reading my paper would suppose I hadn’t a grain of sense or was imitating ______ word. I please her very much with my first narrative. It was the story of my efforts to yet Marcus post the conductor on the train and the buying of a thicket for him when we left. The cork came out so hard that I took a second look and changed bottles, but, as I say, if I die, you’ll know I’ve _____ my sore first.

East Hall is a fairly sensible hall but we have some awfully stupid people here and Celeste Sanford is me. The other night, we had fire drill and we all know we’d have it (the other halls had it the night before but our house. President went over an told them that we had our windows all down an our transoms shut and were sitting up in bed waiting for them so they let East go until next night) and I got out my coat and put on my nightgown but left my shoes on and the windows down and talked to the girl until it came off, but that stupid old Celeste, in spite of knowing that we would have it, she says she knew it, put away her bath rope and didn’t have a towel out (laundry just made up) and went to bed at 9 o’clock and she _____ minutes late to the drill. Poor old Celeste, she is so funny, but she is nice. Well, the next thing on the program is gym, so I’ll go and finish this letter when I come back.

Well, that is over. We did a maypole dance and had a hygiene lecture and no more gym for the rest of this week.

Well, I like Charles but I have a feeling I shouldn’t like him if I knew him as much as I do not knowing him.

Now, Beefy, don’t you think that if you had a nice long-legged candidate from Nigeria (I still start to say “freshman”) and he had a pass on the Southern railway (which, being son of the chief accountant of the _____, he has) that he ought to come and see you? I do. I’d forgive him if he had to rake up sixteen dollars to get down here but I really think he might come as it is. Don’t you? Well, I’ve got to take this letter down to Miss Laura and have it weighed. I fear that it is over two ounces but I’m not going to write a third ounce “no how no way.”

Lots of love and please don’t lose my beautiful book.

Sally

Oh! I’ll have to buy a new packet of envelopes to mail November 2nd.

I suppose in order to learn French

To Bertha from Alice “Sally” – March 15, 1926

[Note: Bertha is 35 and living in Florence, Italy. Her sister Sally is writing her from France.]

Dear Bertha,

I report myself here. Not too enchanted with food conditions but thoroughly contented otherwise. My room is quite large with two windows opening in the place Noel Parfait and a fireplace. My bed is in a corner where it can’t get drafts, that is to say in an alcove. I have a closet with shelves, one with lots of pegs and nothing else and one that is a cabinet de toilet, so I’m told. It looks to me just like the other but has a very small table in it. The wash stand is outside.

The street Sally lived on in Chartres, France (1920s)

The food is only fair and is served à la Chariot D’Or. A number of men come in for meals and I have been put at a little table with a French woman. I suppose in order to learn French. I’m not thrilled with her. There are two cats but they are French and have no sense of decency, one of them kissed me on both cheeks at first meeting. Which reminds me that Mademoiselle did that to me when I went out, and just as I wrote that, she came in to wish me goodnight and darned if she didn’t do it again. But it’s fortunately a rather priestly kiss that it to say she sticks her head on one side of mine and kisses the air and then the other side and kisses the air there.

The cat didn’t. He kissed me all over and stuck his nose in my ear and purred which is one of the thing a cat can do that I can’t stand.

Well, tomorrow I start my adventure. What is to say I pay a professional visit to the cathedral to see what I see.

By the way, I left the canvas and stretchers you had in Paris at Madame Breyer’s office per instructions from Mamma as of course, Madame _____ couldn’t have them any longer when she is leaving.

I’m cold and sleepy and I’m going to bed. Please remember everybody, the lady who knows the Coldwell’s is Mrs. Moore, she lived in Spokane once and knows people there, too, the Atwaters, Connelly’s and others.

Love and good luck,
Sally