I am learning to embrace my unique lifestyle by reading more about the Victorian era, a period in which I find most of my favorite art and some of the most amazing inventions. Perhaps our historic, Queen Anne-styled home has rubbed off on me too, as I am surrounded by its beauty every day. Hopefully, learning what a middle-class Victorian woman did in the home will help guide me on my own journey through life.
I will be sharing several interesting excerpts from the books that I have been reading as of late. This one is an etiquette book for ladies written by Mrs. Humphry, a late Victorian novelist, in 1898 entitled A Word to Women. I will also put the link to the full text at the end of the excerpts if you want to read the complete work.
Let’s begin.
His wife is an education to him…
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The ideal girl is she who combines with high culture a love of the domestic and a desire to please.
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It is good to encourage the love of simple pleasures. It is the way to keep our souls from shrinking.
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To possess a grateful spirit is to increase the happiness of life.
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It is good to teach young people to appreciate the infinite, everyday pleasures that surround them. It adds immensely to their happiness…
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To grow old is tragic, especially for women.
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And as one of Nature’s decrees is that which causes us to adjust ourselves to altered surroundings after change or loss, we accept the altered circumstances, and allow our thoughts and feelings to grow round what is left to us.
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We were surely meant to be happy, we humans, so indomitable is the inclination towards joyfulness under circumstances the most adverse. It is easy enough in youth, and even the sceptic, the pessimist, the cynic, if they live long enough, will find that it is not so very difficult in middle age, when scepticism, pessimism, and cynicism are apt to be outgrown. There lies the true secret of the matter. There is a joy in growth, and we must see to it that we do not cheat ourselves of it. Stunted natures are seldom happy ones, and their middle age is merely mental shrinkage, with a narrowing of the heart and a corresponding drought in all the sources of joy.
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Sometimes two who have loved each other in their youth meet again when middle age has come to both. Such a meeting can never be commonplace to either. Nor do the two see each other as they are visible to ordinary acquaintances. In the eyes of memory, the grey hair is replaced by the sunny locks of youth; the saddened eyes are bright again and eagerly out-looking into a world of abundant promise; the worn and furrowed brow becomes smooth and white, the pale cheeks touched with youthful bloom; and with a delicious sense of reciprocity each knows that the lost youth of both is present to the mind of either.
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But time gives us all something in return; a growing patience which brings sweetness and gentleness in its train; a wider outlook on the world and a deeper insight into the hearts of friends; a tender sympathy with those who suffer, and a truer sense of comradeship with our fellow-travellers on life’s road. And all these things write themselves clearly enough on the ageing faces, sometimes beautifying what once was almost destitute of charm; and sometimes spiritualising what once was beautiful in form and colour, but lacked the loveliness that results from an equal balance of mind and heart.
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The Boy’s Lament
“What can a boy do, and where can a boy stay,
If he always is told to get out of the way?
He cannot sit here, and he mustn’t stand there,
The cushions that cover that gaily-decked chair
Were put there, of course, to be seen and admired;
A boy has no business to feel a bit tired.
The beautiful carpets with blossom and bloom
On the floor of the tempting and light-shaded room,
Are not made to be walked on—at least, not by boys.
The house is no place, anyway, for their noise..
There’s a place for the boys. They will find it somewhere,
And if our own homes are too daintily fair
For the touch of their fingers, the tread of their feet,
They’ll find it, and find it, alas! in the street,
’Mid the gildings of sin and the glitter of vice;
And with heartaches and longings we pay a dear price
For the getting of gain that our lifetime employs
If we fail in providing a place for our boys..
Though our souls may be vexed with the problems of life,
And worn with besetments and toiling and strife,
Our hearts will keep younger—your tired heart and mine—
If we give them a place in our innermost shrine;
And till life’s latest hour ’twill be one of our joys
That we keep a small corner—a place for the boys.”***
Link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36330
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