The Magic of Mrs. Whipple

If you've read this blog with any attention at all, you know that my Sixth Grade (eleventh) year was crucial for me in the number and scope of my declared intentions of going my own way in the world. That was the year I told Girls (my female contemporaries) to stay forever the hell out of my desk and my life.  That was the year I formally renounced Christianity and announced my devotion to Apollo, God of Reason, Music and Light.  That was the year I deliberately, insultingly, and for cause, refused to become a BoyScout.  That was the year I embraced Classicism and rejected Romanticism.  It was also the year that I organized, for a brief while, the "Nazi-Communist Party" (We took over the "Sky Watch" Civilian Air Defense stations, covering them with grafitti of swastikas and hammers-and-sickles).  You're thinking that has got to have been a helluva tough year for my Sixth Grade teacher--but you're wrong in this case, because my Sixth Grade teacher was Mrs. Whipple, and she ate boys like me for breakfast.   How'd she do it?--Well, I offer this in evidence to those who disbelieve in Essential Nature, and who believe that Rôle and Appearance are the only determinants of behavior:

Certainly she was not prepossessing to look at.  Indeed, the clean but shabby oddity of her appearance--the rolled granny stockings, the granny shoes and granny dress; the tatty, nondescript shawl; the outright ugliness of her features, and her partial, undisguised baldness--made one uneasy. On the first day of school, the dozen or so of us who constituted the Sixth Grade in the Lamont Public School that year (1953/54) took our places in a loose semi-circle around the sixty-something old lady (who, being the only adult present, had to be our teacher), fearful of what someone so strange-looking might inflict on us, hoping that at least she would not be such an ogress as our Fifth Grade teacher, Miss Amy, had been.  Then she spoke: "Good morning, young people. I am Mrs. Whipple. Will you tell me your names, please?" Her voice, strangest thing of all, was beautiful--an old woman's voice, to be sure; but clear, charming, with a distinct Southern accent, and a "smile" in it that warmed you right through.  And she hit just the right note in calling us "young people," not "boys and girls."  By the time we had all introduced ourselves, we were friends.  And I, ever the enthusiast, was captivated, even infatuated:  Never had I been treated with such refined courtesy.  Never had I met anyone of such High Culture--except, of course, for my Italian uncle. Mrs. Whipple hailed (But of course!) from Virginia, which for me then, having just read Gone with The Wind (and being moreover, on my mother's mother's father's side, myself a "Musical Moore" of ante-bellum Virginia), was virtually the American Italy.   And therewith she was transformed: Enthralled by the gentle sorcery of her gracious manners and civilized speech, I no longer saw an ugly, dowdy old woman, but a "Wilkes of Virginia."  It's an odd fact that Margaret Mitchell, herself much more an O'Hara than a Wilkes, does quite clearly convey the essential character of a Wilkes-of-Virginia: It doesn't matter at all what a Wilkes looks like, it only matters what a Wilkes is.

So, from the get-go, Mrs. Whipple had me eating out of her hand.  She successfully browbeat me into taking part in the school Christmas pageant (Yo, Balthasar!),  brushing  aside my protest that, for one of my age and gender, to enact a rôle, upon a stage, before an audience, would be unmanly and immodest ("What makes you so special?"). On the other hand, she let me take my head in History, Geography and English, which had me performing far above my grade level in those subjects, not just that year but for the rest of my academic career. I suspect, looking back on it, that I was useful to her, and that a lot, of what the Lamont Public School 1953/54 Sixth Grade Class accomplished (indeed, quite a lot, according to the achievement test scores), was due to my loyal and energetic seconding.  We were, after all, a small class.

I in especial therefore was heartsick when the schoolboard declined to renew Mrs. Whipple's contract for the next year, giving as their reason that she dressed "too poorly and inappropriately for her position."  But then, in that too there was a lesson.