There was a time during the pandemic when Villa Finale had to close its doors to the public. We took advantage of the lack of foot traffic to begin some much-needed maintenance work. If you visit us now, you can still see some of that going on. While I was deep cleaning throughout the house, Buildings and Grounds Manager, Orlando Cortinas was busy overseeing painting, restoration of porches, and cracks in walls.
One morning while I was busy working upstairs, Orlando called me down to the basement where he had been busy in the crawlspace looking at foundation issues: he had found something interesting and wanted me to look at it. Last time this happened a few years ago during the re-wiring of the house, electricians found old Coca-Cola cans and old wallpaper inside the home’s walls. I was excited to see what he’d found, but nothing prepared me for the great discovery!
Tucked between the limestone blocks was what looked like, at first, a piece of paper which turned out to be a photograph of a young woman. Thankfully Orlando was careful to pull it out without so much as a slight tear. After the initial surprise and careful cleaning, I began to wonder, who was this woman and why had she been in our walls for nearly 100 years? We were all eager to share this find with the public but not until we knew more about the mysterious gal: now we do!
Thanks to a source who asked to remain anonymous, we discovered her name was Matilda Fausse. Our source’s grandmother had shared a room with Matilda in the late teens when the property, then at 407 King William, was under the control of the War Service Board; the Board would rent out rooms in the house to visiting female relatives of soldiers stationed at the nearby Arsenal, now HEB headquarters.
Matilda was apparently quite the character, always the life of the party and a progressive woman for the time. In fact, after working odd jobs and saving her money, Matilda insisted on paying to have a private telephone line installed in her room, the only one in the house. According to our source’s grandmother, Matilda was more than happy to let all the girls in the house use her telephone to call their men on base, and vice versa. When a girl’s beau would call, he knew “Telephone Tilly,” as Matilda became to be known, would connect them to their favorite gal. The telephone was the only way a girl’s beloved would be allowed “in the house” and Telephone Tilly was more than happy to make “virtual dates” happen! Allegedly, the photo we found was taken at the height of Tilly’s popularity with her fellow boarders.
But what started out as innocent fun and games crossed the line. Soon, Telephone Tilly was playing match-maker for half of the young women in San Antonio via the telephone. Calls were coming in day and night for weeks: 1:30am, RING! 3:00am, RING! 3:45am, RING! Sleep was non-existent for the rest of the girls who had had more than enough of Tilly. Everyone was walking around with huge dark circles under their eyes! They wanted sleep, desperately! One chilly fall evening in the middle of the night, Telephone Tilly – and yes, her phone, too – were escorted out of the house and onto King William Street never to be heard from again.
Exhausted, the female boarders took Tilly’s photograph and stuffed it in the basement crawlspace where not even the telephone in the picture could ever keep them from sleeping again … until our discovery in the summer of 2020, that is. No one knows what happened to Matilda “Telephone Tilly” Fausse. Some say she started her own party line. Others think she opened a coffee house / telephone bar east of New Braunfels called “Hello, Is It Bean You’re Looking For?” Whatever happened to our gal, next time you hear a phone ring think of Telephone Tilly, and on behalf of Villa Finale, do have a HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY!
Thank you to Orlando Cortinas for going into the basement crawlspace for the sake of this April Fools Day blog post!
Orlando Cortinas
Sylvia M. Gonzalez-Pizana
The Blog of Villa Finale: Museum & Gardens 