She was young and she was beautiful and she was 18 years old. her name was elinor Moses and she was the daughter of a Los Angeles business tycoon. her long-ago scrapbook — titled “Stunt

Book” — is a marvel: visually eclectic, at once somber and goofy, an extraordinary time capsule. Generations ago, everyone kept scrap-books, and I have waded through hundreds of them. Yet I remain humbled by hers, because her pictures and words are assembled with such an oddly endearing combination of fervor and grace.

The “Stunt Book” opens with a playful challenge on its title page:

As I read, I soon become immersed in her life, putting the pieces together from the multiple fragments she left behind. her scrapbook is packed with telegrams, photographs, love letters, invitations and newspaper clippings, hair ribbons and candy wrappers. A regular fixture on the society pages of the local newspapers, she led a life filled with parties and dances and teas and luncheons, many given in her honor during the summer of 1920. Come autumn, she was to set sail for a year in Switzerland, to attend finishing school.

And then something shocking happened: on June 8, during a bridal dinner for her cousin edward, given at the home of elinor’s parents, there was a robbery.

Three men — allegedly seeking the $15,000 in diamonds being worn by the 20 members of the bridal party — entered the Moses residence in Los Angeles, whereupon they shot the bridegroom and two other men, including the bride’s younger brother. They then fled empty-handed. The “nuptial bandits” were apprehended several days later, and the wedding took place at the hospital where the groom lay recu-perating. elinor saved all the clippings.

On the back of a cocktail coaster from the hotel Virginia in Long Beach, Calif., the evening’s menu (at least elinor’s share of it) is recorded in a man’s hasty scrawl.

The annotated coaster is dated July, but it is pasted next to a single red rose, incongruously captioned “Valentine’s Day,” along with the calling cards of no fewer than three suitors. Who sent the flowers? Was it edward everett holmes? Frederick h. Stant? harold McAl-ister? This page was constructed a mere six weeks after the robbery attempt, and life had, as far as elinor was apparently concerned, largely returned to normal.

BY the end of the summer, elinor Moses was getting ready to leave. There were going-away parties and dances at the ebell Club, at the Athletic League, and private receptions in friends’

homes. new kinds of ephemera appear in the pages of her scrap-book — more weddings, more birth announcements — suggesting that her peers, too, were moving forward with their lives. And then there are surprises: the calling card of Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille, wife of the famous director.

The scrapbook itself conjures a “Gatsby”-like whirlwind of care-free abandon. Or so it seems, before I happen upon a letter sent ear-lier that summer from the chairman of the American Committee for Devastated France thanking Miss elinor Moses for collecting 23 checks totaling more than $1,000. Another letter, postmarked from France, is also sent to elinor, in appreciation of her acting as god-mother to a little girl.

Included is a photograph of a girl of perhaps 6 or 7, posing beside a hoop, her face weary. On the back, in an adult’s shaky hand, is the child’s name. Below it is written: “votre fille adoptive.”

Such acts of charity may indeed have been expected of young debutantes, but the inclusion of these letters is still jarring. Imagine, for a moment, the emotional bond between a Los Ange-les heiress and an orphaned child in France; the letters shed rather a differ-ent light on the autobiographical antics of a stunt-seeking debutante. her name may have been Fun, but she also hap-pened to have a rather extraordinary heart.

I do a little hunting and discover that elinor’s engagement was announced, in 1927, in a society column. She mar-ried in Paris, and later had a daughter whose own nuptials were reported in the spring of 1956. The “nuptial bandits” never did return, nor is there any reference, in the remainder of the scrapbook, to the spectacular events of June 8, 1920. There are however, huge quantities of dance cards, with all of them filled, and every last dance spoken for.

Far left: Elinor Moses in an undated photograph, and one of her many dance cards.Center and left: Elinor’s friends at the beach. Top right: A celebrity’s calling card.

Stunt Book, 1920

SummerscapesJessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand, a graphic designer, is the author of the forthcoming “Scrapbooks: An American History.”