Old Times (part 2 of 3)

After the event, we toured the Hunter-Dawson home and I photographed a few gems, including this blue glass darning egg (prob. 20th century, but still lovely)

There was a beautiful silk embroidered doily (likely also from the early 20th century)

This 1840s portrait of the owner and her son shows one of my favorite accessories: a coral necklace.

Upstairs were some exquisite little baby things (perhaps from a variety of mid- to late-19th century dates)

Just look at the details on this tiny coat

One room had some mourning items, including this necklace

and this watch fob

The tiny little man got a chance to display himself as a font of knowledge and I got to see a a few of the garments he had made for the display. He has a coarse hand and has fortunately given up sewing.

... more to come ...

Book Club

I've never belonged to a book club. I don't know if that's a funny thing for an English major or not.

Like so many things in my life, I want to read what I want to read and when I want to read it. Like so many other things in my life, however, I benefit from having an assignment and a deadline.

I, therefore, joined a book club.

Of course, it's a club that meets about five hours from me. It's also a club for which I am NOT technically eligible for membership, having crossed that fatal porch of forty and this particular club being a club for young misses. Still, they were reading interesting books, and they told me I could be an honorary member, which is rather sweet.

And, seriously, I don't know if I would want me in a book club.

So I didn't go.

I did read the book though: Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.

For the first three weeks, I tried to read a chapter every night. Most nights I fell asleep before I could finish. Then this morning, I picked it up and powered through the last quarter of the book. I couldn't put it down.

I've got more than two degrees in Victorian literature, but being the dilettante, only started reading Gaskell in the last two years. She's wonderful, in some moments as funny and insightful as Austen.

Covering the labor conflicts in the slums of Manchester, Mary Barton isn't as funny as Cranford, nor does it have as much knitting.

Mary Barton, however, does offer some possibilities for an interesting re-reading to look at the dynamics of women's handiwork.

God, that sounds all academic-y. Sorry. The knitting bit is coming; I promise.

Anyway, Mary, the heroine, is a bit of a flighty girl, although she's good hearted. She earns her living in a fancy dressmaker's shop, where she's exposed to gossipy shop girls, and the curious gaze* of customers, both male and female.

Beyond her job, Mary's not really associated with needlework. It's merely a job for her, a source of income.** Even in her job, we don't hear much about her actual work, more about the gossip and how her later notoriety as the witness in a murder trial can lure in potential clients to the shop.

In the evenings, Mary does some mending for pay and turns a skirt*** on a mourning dress for a widowed neighbor, the latter act showing her general kindness when she's not being blinded by her own self-centeredness.

Her foil is Margaret: not as pretty, entirely selfless, and literally blind.

It's Margaret who is the knitter:

• "Margaret, who could not be idle, was knitting away, with her face looking full into the room, away from her work" (174).

The other knitter is Alice, the aged aunt to one of Mary's childhood friends:

• "On opening the door, Alice was seen, not stirring about in her habitual way, but knitting by the fire-side" (137).
• "Alice, who, in her surprised, hearty greeting to Mary, had dropped her ball of worsted, and was busy trying to set the thread to rights, before the kitten had entangled it past redemption, once round every chair, and twice round the table" (137).
  

So there you go. My contribution to book club, however small.

Next month, I'm sure I'll be just as absent for The Woman in White, which I've read twice already, but am looking forward to reading each night just before bed.

I peeked and there is one wee knitterly bit.
_____________
*It would, of course, be completely annoying to show up in a book club and do a gaze theory analysis of Mary Barton. The possibility tantalizes, however.

**If you'd like to run off for a bit to look at the cover art from Mary Barton paperback editions, you'll notice, ironically, how several of them feature M.B. stand-ins happily sewing in pastoral settings.

***Turning a skirt means detaching a long skirt from its waistband and turning it so that what was the hem is now at the top. The hem getting the most wear, turning was a way to prolong the life of a garment. I found this bit really fascinating because I had just turned a skirt on an 1850s dress myself, being too poor and overworked to make a new one. Made me feel just like Mary Barton, it did:

• "... she was too busy planning how her old black gown (her best when her mother died) might be sponged, and turned, and lengthened into something like decent mourning for the widow" (82).

I Spy with My Own Little Eye

• a stack of ungraded papers.
• a copy of the anniversary issue of Vogue Knitting. I have knit the anniversary scarf and made up the flowers. It's been up in a grocery sack in the sewing room waiting to be assembled since December.
• a unfinished bit of hairpin lace.
• Emma, which I am supposed to be reading for a KAL. I'm about three weeks behind. Neither Emma nor Mr. Knightley appeal to me much.
• a spool of blue quilting thread for a quilt I haven't been working on in months.
• an unfinished mardi gras stole. I did manage to knit 6 rows on it yesterday.
• a small fragment of fisherman's wool left over from a charity hat. It should be thrown away because the cats have taken to playing with it, but I just can't bring myself to toss it. It's just enough for a stripe.
• an ad for the orchid show at the Missouri Botanical Garden I would like to see. It ends in a week.
• an unfinishedFidget. I only need to knit about an inch, but have misplaced the pattern.
• Victorian Lace Today, set aside because I could not find my size 8s for a shawl I have no business starting.
• a single sock knit to the ball of the foot, so that LB could try it on this morning. In the less than five minutes between when he tried it on & I went to the kitchen for the Pepsi One, a certain cat (probably Yma) bit the yarn in half.
• a gossip mag and two half-completed crosswords my sweetie presented to me as a surprise this morning. At first he just said, "I thought you would like these," but when asked where they came from, said "The dumpster...but they were on the top."
• the inevitable partially-drunk can of Pepsi One (sweetened with Splenda).
• a short stack of unread magazines. The bigger stack got shoved onto the floor and is out of the frame.
• a Bud Plant catalogue. I have had a $30 credit with them for at least 3 years, waiting on me to order something, anything.
• Three yarns and a crochet stitch pattern to help reproduce a civil war scarf I saw in a photo. It's not working very well.

The only completed things in the photo are the following:

• A coffee-stained quilt
• The deluxe DVD of Pride and Prejudice watched in one sitting yesterday.
• a handout I wrote for an upcoming Civil War dance program

Jesus. Is it any wonder "Chaos" is my name?

A Life Well Spent

I love this painting, "A Life Well Spent" by Charles West Cope (1862).
Artistically, it's tightly unified with the black and pink details echoing from mother to daughter to bassinet.

It's also a little slice of Victorian life and fashions. The mother is presented as industrious and productive--she's not just knitting socks, but she has four little ones under the age of, say, ten. They're all clean, placid, and content.

The interior space is crammed with Victorianisms without being cluttered--there's the obligatory Jesus picture, the elaborately carved sideboard, the velvet chair with fringe and brass tacks, the embroidered tablecloth, the workbaskets, the children's slate, and more.

The mother is wearing a typical mid-century dress, probably a black striped silk with black glass buttons and silk trim. Crisp collar and cuffs set off the gathered bodice with coat sleeves. Her hair is smoothly confined into a decorative net. She's knitting fashionable striped stockings, probably for her daughter.

The daughter, not yet a young woman, still has her hair down and her skirt short, but she's modestly attired in a sheer white dress with black belt and embellishments, a simple black ribbon holding back her hair. Her blond hair, demure appearance, and her hand on the bassinet indicate that she will grow up to be just like her mother.

The title of the painting tells us how we're supposed to read this painting. There is neither window nor door. This mother's whole life revolves around her children and the domestic interior. And it Cope's view, at least, the reward is this content, peaceful home.