File:Our Philadelphia (1914) (14801935683).jpg

Identifier: ourphiladelphia00penn (find matches)
Title: Our Philadelphia
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, 1855-1936 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926
Subjects: Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, 1855-1936 Lithography, American
Publisher: Philadelphia and London : J. B. Lippincott Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ery grey silks, with their delicatefichus and Canton shawls. The well-dressed Philadel-phia woman knows what she has to pay for the eleganceof her simplicity. And the Assembly has always called forthe finest she could achieve, from the day when Franklinwas made to feel the cost to him if his daughter was to havewhat she needed to go out in decency with the Wash-ingtons in Philadelphia. I had the common sense to understand my position andnot to be misled by the poverty-stricken, but irresistibleNancies and Dollies who were enjoying a vogue in thenovels of the day and who encircled empty bank accountsand big families with the halo of romance. To read aboutthe struggles with poverty of the irresistible young heroinemight be amusing, but I had no special use for them as apersonal experience. It would have been preposterous forme to think for a moment that, without a decent gown,I could go to the Assembly and, to do myself justice, I didnot think it. But by this time I knew what coming out
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-,i^ -.ir-lgj^ THE TUNNEL IN THE PARK THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY 169 and being out meant and, therefore, I apj^reciated thesocial drawback it must be for me not to be able to go. Itexplained, as nothing hitherto had, how far I was frombeing caught up in the whirl, and it is only the whirl thatkeeps one going in society—that makes society a delightfulprofession, and I think I realized this truth better than thepeople so extravagantly in the Philadelphia whirl as to haveno time to think about it. All that winter I never gotto the point of being less concerned as to where the nextinvitation was to come from than as to how I was to acceptall that did come. There is no use denying that I was dis-appointed and suffered from the disappointment. Onepays a heavier price for the first foolish illusion lost thanfor all the others put together, no matter how serious theyare. Ill When the season was over, I had as little hope of keep-ing up in other essential ways. If society then adjour

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