Today in Old News, we continue our stroll through a little-known novel by that late, great Arkansan, Mrs. Bernie Babcock (1868-1962).
An early draft of "Billy of Arkansas" appeared in the Arkansas Progress, a Little Rock temperance paper, in 1914. In 1922, the statewide daily Arkansas Democrat serialized an updated and longer version of the story, set during Prohibition circa 1920 or '21.
This is a love story about a clear-headed, nubile and wealthy white teetotaler, Billy Camelton. Billy returns home from school to make her Little Rock social debut to the delight and dismay of three aunties, whose dearest wish is that she hurry up and marry some man of high social standing.
Billy navigates what turns out to be a matrimonial minefield, seeing through and casting aside assorted vain, dissolute, vapid or conniving suitors. Her refusals confuse and alarm her aunties, who don't understand why she expects to find a good-looking, honest and intelligent man who adores her and will make a good father.
Society has begun to gossip about her. So the aunties breathe a sigh of relief when Billy goes abroad with her school chum Jane Bierce, whose brother John inspired Billy's teetotalling. Billy writes home to Aunt Nan and the Bishop.
First, the young ladies visit Paris, where their aristocratic hostess introduces them to Count Henri de Bonaventeau.
"A real live count is interested in Billy, very much interested," Miss Nan tells the Bishop, adding with frustration, "she does not look with favor on his suit. It is a bad habit Billy has of looking with disfavor on everybody's suit, but he is persistent and something may yet come of it. I shall write her tonight. And you write to her, Bishop. Say something favorable to the Count. Counts, that is, real counts, are not picked up every day."
But Billy does not care to be Countess de Bonaventeau, as this arrogant man with a moustache waxed as stiff as his shirt front has assumed an American will swoon before his titled magnificence. He sends her a little gold-colored dinner ring bearing his family crest, dusted with diamonds that out-sparkle dewdrops. When she refuses to accept it, because decent girls don't accept lavish gifts from men, he follows her to Switzerland.
"He said he had come to invite our party to his country place," Billy writes, "one of the most beautiful in Switzerland with hundreds of acres of ground lying along a limpid lake with game fish sporting in its waters and where lilies bloomed in the gardens and nightingales warbled in the woodlands.
"Not to be outdone by French hospitality, I invited the party to Arkansas to my plantation of a thousand acres lying along the smoothly flowing Arkansas, where sand-bars sparkle in the sun and more catfish sport in the waters than all Europe ever saw; where violets and dogwood and roses and scarlet trumpets and smilax grow wild and mockingbirds not only sing all day, but all night."
"Just think," clueless Miss Nan says, thrilled, "Billy may have a visit from a real count. Won't it be remarkable?"
In Berlin, Billy and Jane meet a handsome Socialist in an art gallery. Billy writes that she's mad about "the Doktor," but alas! He likes Jane better.
Miss Nan and the Bishop heave great sighs of relief until they read that Jane has converted to Socialism.
Billy writes, "I always thought a Socialist was some species of malcontent waving a red flag and searching a place to hide a bomb. But it is not so. You won't understand this by listening to Jane and the 'Doktor' talk 10 minutes. The funny thing about a Socialist is his passion for making another Socialist. Jane has me marked, and she says she is going after her brother John, a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist."
"Mercy!" Miss Nan exclaims. "But God is good! How simply dreadful it would have been had not Jane Bierce been there to get that man. Wouldn't it be pitiful for Billy to land at last on a Socialist?"
But it is the letter the Bishop receives from London that produces the most alarm. Billy has donated $1,000 to a relief fund for starving Russians after being thrilled by a huge Labor protest in Trafalgar Square.
"Billy is going too far," the Bishop rants. "The idea of giving $1,000 to that bunch of Bolsheviki! I am a humanitarian. I believe in relieving the suffering that comes of famine and war. But those Bolsheviki deserve all that shall ever come upon them. If Billy had put that same amount into the church, it would have kept a missionary in [Korea] for a year. Let us pray God she does not become inoculated with radicalism in her foreign travels."
"Lord save us!" Miss Nan groans over her smelling salts.
Billy's final letter before her return conveys news her homefolks must see as serious, that European "males of the 'genus homo'" are intent upon starting another war: "When I get home, I'm going to join the pacifists," she writes. "If there is another war, I'm going to turn agitator. I may end in jail; but suppose I do, haven't the best folks in every age been locked up?
"I shall not, however, desert society entirely. I like to dance too well and have too many pretty French gowns that somebody must see."
BACK TO ARKANSAS
Billy arrives home with her grand pacifist plans and the gowns and within a week falls madly in love with a soldier.
The morning after her return, the untrustworthy chaperone of Billy's debut season calls at the Alexander home to invite her to lunch at the country club.
"It has been arranged as a welcome by your girl friends, and your gentlemen friends will be guests," Mrs. Benton-Gordon says. "And, Billy dear, you are to meet a new addition to our social set, the darlingest man that ever lived. Every girl in town has lost her head over him. But, Billy dear, he wants to see you is actually crazy to see you."
"What kind of a man is this that has gone crazy to see a girl he knows nothing of?" Billy asks.
Mrs. Benton-Gordon assures her that everybody has been telling him everything about her, which makes Billy laugh: "I do not wonder he has some curiosity if this is the case, if he's been told everything."
Capt. Sidney Larvante is an officer at Camp Pike. Billy is unimpressed: "I have seen so much braid and buttons the last six months it no longer interests me."
But our hackles should rise when Mrs. Benton-Gordon adds that Mr. Brighton Day has declared Larvante "a man Miss Camelton will like." Day was the dandy that Billy insulted by uncovering his predatory pursuit of her maid's biracial daughter (see arkansasonline.com/36billy).
Her chaperone adds that Billy must endeavor to look her best, "for, believe me, Captain Larvante is a connoisseur when it comes to the face and form and dress of a woman."
SMITTEN
Babcock doesn't describe the luncheon. Instead we see Billy's behavior afterward, how her report of the affair to Aunt Nan loops around and around a half-dozen times to things Larvante said or did. And she announces that the next day she will drive to the camp to see the changes made there during her trip abroad.
Billy had never been interested enough in the North Little Rock camp before this to drive there once a month.
At camp, Billy picks up the captain and drives him in her car on a tour of the Army training post.
"This was the beginning," Babcock writes. "After he met Billy, Captain Larvante had no time for other maids or matrons, and Billy postponed for a time the great work she had planned."
Has Miss Camelton finally found her mate? Tune in next week.
Email: cstorey@adgnewsroom.com
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