Patty Fairfield

I intend to reread as many of Carolyn Wells’ Patty Fairfield books as I can get my hands on this summer. Seven out of the seventeen books are up on Project Gutenberg, and I own one of the others. I’ve never found a Patty book in a bookstore, but they’re not terribly hard to find online, and…well, the Patty books somehow seem more worth owning than other girls’ series. I hope to own the whole series someday.

The Patty Fairfield series is odd in more ways than one. First, it lies somewhere between series like those turned out by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and things that are thought of as “children’s literature” — like, say, Louisa May Alcott’s stuff. Maybe it ranks similarly to Pollyanna, but only because Pollyanna‘s considered a classic. Patty is more fun any day.

But that’s all kind of meaningless, really. A more practical oddity is that the Patty books rarely have anything resembling a normal plot. The first one, Patty Fairfield, probably has the most plot, but even then it’s only provided by the framework — Patty’s father sending her on four thee-month-long visits to four different sets of aunt and uncles in order to learn how different people live. The rest of the time, it’s all parties, clothes, games, and friends. Patty is a rich girl, and while schoolwork makes the occasional intrusion — most noticeably in Patty’s Summer Days — Patty gets to spend a lot of time just having fun. And what’s really special about these books is that the fun that the characters have is fun for the readers, too.

Patty’s Summer Days is the one Patty book I own, and I’ve had it for years and read it a number of times. Aside from the aforementioned bit where school kind of intrudes, it’s weddings, carnivals, and dancing bears — no, literally — the whole time. So when I found that a number of the Patty books were online and decided to read the first one, I was a little surprised by a) something vaguely resembling a plot and b) something very definitely resembling a moral.

See, Patty has grown up in Virginia with her widowed father. They’ve lived in boarding houses since her mother died and Patty has never even left the state. But now she’s fourteen, and her dad kind of wants his own house, probably in New York, and he wants Patty to help him set it up and stuff. It’s going to take him about a year to wrap up all his business in Virginia, so he comes up with a plan: Patty will spend the year visiting her relatives, and at the end of the year he’ll meet up with her and they’ll decide where to live. She’ll miss him a lot, but she’ll see how people live when they don’t live in boarding houses, and, more importantly, she’ll learn about Proportion with a capital P. Mr. Fairfield has to explain to Patty what proportion is, but he catches on pretty quickly, and as she visits each set of relatives, she’s able to explain to her father exactly what is out of proportion.

With the first set, the St. Clairs, it’s all about wealth. Uncle Robert indulges his family to a ridiculous extent, and, what’s worse, insists on telling people the prices of all the expensive things he buys in the most obnoxious way possible. Aunt Isabel cares only about outdoing the neighbors, and Reginald, Ethelyn, and Florelle are about as bratty as you’d expect. But they’re nice people, and Patty is an adaptable girl, so she gets along okay, living as the St. Clairs do, but taking away her lesson about proportion.

Next are the Flemings. They’re a very literary family, and an overly busy one, always rushing off to attend readings or educate bootblacks. They too are nice, but a little absent-minded when it comes to anything but their own schedules. They’re also not much for fun and games, much to Patty’s dismay. Ruth, who’s about Patty’s age, doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor at all.

After her literary summer in Boston, Patty goes to spend the summer on Long Island with the Barlows: Grace, Ted, Helen, and Bob. Helen and Bob are twins about Patty’s age, and are lots more fun than Ruth. Plus, there’s Nan Allen, a friend of the Barlows, who, although she’s about twenty, is happy to hang out with the kids. Also, she’s bald.

The Barlows’ issue is organization. None of them can ever remember what they’re supposed to do, and so nothing gets done. When they set out to have a party, they don’t make any of the preparations until the day of, and then they realize they’ve forgotten to send out any invitations. I guess they can’t be blamed for their house catching on fire, but then they don’t remember to replaced the burned-up staircase until after they’ve left at the end of the summer.

Patty’s final stop is with the Elliots in Vernondale, NJ, where, like Goldilocks, she finds that everything is just right. Her Aunt Alice teaches her to cook and sew, and her cousins Frank and Marian and their friends are nice and welcoming, especially after Patty saves her littlest cousin, Gilbert, from drowning. She likes Vernondale so much that when her father arrives at the end of her visit, she tells him she wants to live there always. Their search for a house in the neighborhood is the start of the next book, Patty at Home.