The Homely Heroine
By Edna Ferber
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About this ebook
Edna Ferber
Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was a novelist, short-story writer, and playwright whose work served as the inspiration for numerous Broadway plays and Hollywood films, including Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant, Saratoga Trunk, and Ice Palace. She co-wrote the plays The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, and Stage Door with George S. Kaufman and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big.
Read more from Edna Ferber
So Big Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Big: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Show Boat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One Basket Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Big Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Best Humorous Writings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoast Beef, Medium (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Big Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fanny Herself: Autobiographical Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsButtered Side Down Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSo Big (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Half Portions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Big Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fanny Herself (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Personality Plus: Some Experiences of Emma McChesney And Her Son, Jack Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Big Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGigolo (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
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The Homely Heroine - Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
The Homely Heroine
SAGA Egmont
The Homely Heroine
Cover image: Shutterstock
Copyright © 1926, 2020 Edna Ferber and SAGA Egmont
This work is republished as a historical document. It contains contemporary use of language.
ISBN: 9788726553611
1st ebook edition
Format: EPUB 2.0
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievial system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor, be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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The Homely Heroine
Millie Whitcomb, of the fancy goods and notions, beckoned me with her finger. I had been standing at Kate O'Malley's counter, pretending to admire her new basket-weave suitings, but in reality reveling in her droll account of how, in the train coming up from Chicago, Mrs. Judge Porterfield had worn the negro porter's coat over her chilly shoulders in mistake for her husband's. Kate O'Malley can tell a funny story in a way to make the after-dinner pleasantries of a Washington diplomat sound like the clumsy jests told around the village grocery stove.
I wanted to tell you that I read that last story of yours,
said Millie, sociably, when I had strolled over to her counter, and I liked it, all but the heroine. She had an’adorable throat' and hair that’waved away from her white brow,' and eyes that’now were blue and now gray.' Say, why don't you write a story about an ugly girl?
My land!
protested I. It's bad enough trying to make them accept my stories as it is. That last heroine was a raving beauty, but she came back eleven times before the editor of Blakely's succumbed to her charms.
Millie's fingers were busy straightening the contents of a tray of combs and imitation jet barrettes. Millie's fingers were not intended for that task. They are slender, tapering fingers, pink-tipped and sensitive.
I should think,
mused she, rubbing a cloudy piece of jet with a bit of soft cloth, that they'd welcome a homely one with relief. These goddesses are so cloying.
Millie Whitcomb's black hair is touched with soft mists of gray, and she wears lavender shirtwaists and white stocks edged with lavender. There is a Colonial air about her that has nothing to do with celluloid combs and imitation jet barrettes. It breathes of dim old rooms, rich with the tones of mahogany and old brass, and Millie in the midst of it, gray-gowned, a soft white fichu crossed upon her breast.
In our town the clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young persons that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are institutions. They know us all by our first names, and our lives are as an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bascom's for so many years that she is rumored to have stock in the company, may be said to govern the fashions of our town. She is wont to say, when we express a fancy for gray as the color of our new spring suit:
Oh, now, Nellie, don't get gray again. You had it year before last, and don't you think it was just the least leetle bit trying? Let me show you that green that came in yesterday. I said the minute I clapped my eyes on it that it was just the color for you, with your brown hair and all.
And we end by deciding on the green.
The girls at Bascom's are not gossips—they are too busy for that—but they may be said to be delightfully well informed. How could they be otherwise when we go to Bascom's for our wedding dresses and party favors and baby flannels? There is news at Bascom's that our daily paper never hears of, and wouldn't dare print if it did.
So when Millie Whitcomb, of the fancy goods and notions, expressed her hunger for a homely heroine, I did not resent the suggestion. On the contrary, it sent me home in thoughtful mood, for Millie Whitcomb has acquired a knowledge of human nature in the dispensing of her fancy goods and notions. It set me casting about for a really homely heroine.
There never has been a really ugly heroine in fiction. Authors have started bravely out to write of an unlovely woman, but they never have had the courage to allow her to remain plain. On Page 237 she puts on a black lace dress and