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•——— Recto Runninhead ———• 255 ———— Chapter Twenty-Two ———— The Sentimental Satellites p During the week of November 8 to 13, Cora missed her corridor meeting, neglected her outdoor exercise, was unprepared for German on the 10th, missed her Harmony class on the 11th, was late on another day, and skipped chapel on the 11th, 13th, and 14th. She proudly displayed this dismal attendance slip in her scrapbook—maybe it was a new low for her? Was she wavering in her resolve to become a serious Vassar student? Not everything was going badly. Two weeks earlier, Cora had finally been asked to be on the Thekla committee along with another newcomer , Miss Jennie Warren, of Bay City, Michigan. As two Midwesterners, Miss Warren and Miss Keck were flattered at being asked to take charge. All that they were expected to do was to copy out the programs by hand (in an era before photocopiers) and organize the refreshments to be served after each small student workshop performance, but they were making inroads into the territory formerly controlled by the socially prominent “nice” girls who had dominated Thekla’s leadership the year before. Cora was also asked to perform in front of her Vassar classmates for only the second time after her nerve-racking debut with the Beethoven sonata at the workshop the previous spring. She presented the simple arpeggios and linked chords of Raff’s Mélodique to her fellow students, feeling Miss Chapin’s eyes drilling into her back the whole time. She must have proved to her teacher that she could listen to the music and create her own phrasing and expression, instead of pumping out streams of unanalyzed notes at top speed, because after this performance, Cora was allowed to resume playing advanced pieces. Miss Chapin assigned her pupil two Chopin impromptus, op. 29 and 36, which she marked with the following notes: “Wilber Derthrick method” and “‘Sphengali’ Triplits.” [ 255 ] 256 •——— verso runninghead ———• Sphengali? Sounds like more glamour than you would require from a routine piano drill. And what was the Wilber Derthrick method? In her scrapbook, Cora saved a piano technique exercise that Miss Chapin wrote out for her on staff paper: “chin quiet—mouth open—piano smooth—Tha-la-da Tha-la-da—Na-ma-na chin quiet, [again].” Was the Derthrick method one of those “good for you” teaching exercises like race-walking that looks extremely silly to onlookers? I’ll probably never know. On Thursday the 12th, Ned hosted her first spread in parlor 8. Cora was glad to see that her young protégée was finally launched at college on a solid footing with a social life of her own; she tried to fade into the background (which was very hard for her to do) and let Ned shine as a hostess. Miss Warren’s roommate, Lydia Day, came too. It was said around the college that Miss Day was as wild as a western mustang; “the girls called me a wild girl,” she wrote about herself later in the year. While Ned’s guests spread jam on pieces of cake, dropped olives into their mouths, and spooned up the last of the melting ice cream from Smiths, they discussed the latest rumors about the college’s administration ; some of them had heard that the interim president, Kendrick, would not be returning after the Christmas break.1 Throughout the fall, bitter struggles among different factions backing different presidential candidates intermittently emerged into public view in the newspapers, and the students were all too familiar with how precarious their college leadership was. Maybe the trustees had found a new president or Kendrick was in trouble in some way. They all felt a mixture of hope and anxiety. What if the infighting blocked a rescue? What if the college couldn’t solve its financial problems? No one said out loud what was really on their minds: What if Vassar had to close its doors? That same day, Cora received an urgent telegram from her mother with a strongly worded command: “Go to Philadelphia immediately & rest for two weeks.” Was she wearing herself out and getting sick with stress and overwork? Cora ignored her mother’s instruction. Instead, Kitty Rogers invited her to go down to New York City that Saturday to see a comedy by Henry Arthur Jones, appropriately titled Saints and Sinners, at the Madison Square Theater. Cora was soon on the train not to Philadelphia, but to Manhattanville. •——— chapter twenty-two ———• •——— Recto Runninhead ———• 257 b...

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