Dinner parties and dances: A look into the debutante side of Rupert Crebbin’s life

By peeling back the pages of Rupert Crebbin’s scrapbook, one can observe many handpicked facts and figures that hint at who this woman really is. The scrapbook itself is an account of Mrs. Crebbin’s 1945-1946 debutante year, the women she shared it with, and the activities she participated in.

Although this information gives us some insight into her life, it does not answer the question, “Who is Rupert Crebbin?” The whole of someone’s being cannot be surmised by a few simple facts, but we can become one step closer to finding this answer by searching within the very fabric of her scrapbook. This is my humble attempt to decode Mrs. Crebbin’s life.

Picture A, page 10 of Crebbin’s scrapbook. Photo provided by the Newcomb College Scrapbook Collection at Tulane University. 

To begin, Crebbin was regarded as a very educated and intelligent young woman. A newspaper article in the scrapbook mentioned that she graduated Newcomb College in only three years, and then continued to New York for a special business course (p.10, see picture a).

With this information I would be led to believe that Mrs. Crebbin was a very ambitious woman. Being a woman in college in the 1940s was a big accomplishment to begin with, and perusing further education after college is a feat only the most motivated of woman could accomplish. Adding on to this pile of responsibilities, the same newspaper article said that Crebbin taught Sunday school, and from various clippings throughout the scrapbook, showed that Mrs. Crebbin may have been highly active in scheduling and attending debutante affairs (p.65, 63).

With all of this knowledge combined, I would assume that Rupert Crebbin was the type of woman that was happy always having something to do. She seemed to enjoy having this be a part of her identity and liked presenting herself this way as well. This can be seen in the comic book party she threw where she had four whole pages dedicated to it, more than she allotted for most of the other activities (pgs. 19-22, see picture b for a look).

Picture B, page 20 of Crebbin’s scrapbook. Photo provided by the Newcomb College Scrapbook Collection at Tulane University. 

Something else I detected from Mrs. Crebbin’s scrap book was her personality. Even though her scrapbook is a collection of mementos from her 1945-1946 debutante year, only a fraction of the information was directly about herself. In the first 10 pages alone, Rupert Crebbin was mentioned on a mere 4 pages. The rest of the pages are filled with other women who were in debutante activities, facts about them, and pictures. This makes Mrs. Crebbin seem very selfless.

Another clipping that supports my hypothesis of Rupert Crebbin’s personality can be seen on page 128, where her friend writes her a letter saying that she, “could not have had such a wonderful time if it had not been for [Crebbin’s] kindness” (letter shown in picture c). Similarly, I could also deduce that Mrs. Crebbin cared about these women. The scrapbook contains pictures of some of the same girls throughout the entire 168 page book, and if she did not care about these women, she most likely would not have documented them so well, and been at so many functions with them.

Picture C, page 128 of Crebbin’s scrapbook. Photo provided by the Newcomb College Scrapbook Collection at Tulane University. 

From the entirety of the scrapbook, I would assume that Crebbin made this book for herself in order to remind herself of the fun times she had and friends she made as a debutante. I would guess this because of how heavily she documented the other people who did debutante things with her.

No one else would be able to look at this book and have as much personal knowledge of all the girls except Crebbin and the other women. I would rule out that it was a scrapbook for all of the debutantes because of how personal all of the letters were (p.128, 84, 168).

[Editor’s Note: This article was captured as part of the class “Media Histories” taught by Vicki Mayer in collaboration with the Office of Alumni Affairs at Tulane University.]