Mr. Finkhouser’s Experience as a New Year’s Caller, as Chronicled by Himself.
Young Mr. Finkhouser could have cried with vexation when he got out of bed on New Year’s morning and saw the weather. His heart came right up into his throat, and he only swallowed it by a prodigious effort. He had planned somewhat less than a thousand calls that day, and his line march, as projected, was little less than Sherman’s march to the sea. He moped, and sulked, and swore under his breath, nearly all the morning, and it was not until nearly noon that he reflected that the carriage he had engaged for the occasion was drawing pay right along, improving every drizzling hour. Then he braced up and determined to call any how. And he arrayed himself in fine broadcloth and linen and went down stairs, and there, sure enough, was the waiting carriage, floating around in the street with a drowned man on the box. Mr. Finkhouser climbed and was slowly dragged away.
We did not have the pleasure of accompanying Mr. Finkhouser on this eventful journey, and his own account of its events were somewhat too confused to be implicitly relied on. But his diary was taken from his breast pocket and its brief entries afforded an interesting study of the gradual transition from the cold formalities and conventionalities of the first calls to the cordiality and hearty friendliness and intimacy of the later and closing calls. Mr. Finkhouser was not an old veteran caller, this being his first New Year’s out, and his diary is all the more interesting on that account. It appears that Mr. Finkhouser, anxious to improve, made an entry of his salutations as soon as he returned to the carriage from each visit, and it is quite apparent that he did his best to improve on every effort. And here is the way he improved:
11:15 A.M. – “Ah-haw-aw, yes, yes. Happy New Year, Miss Dresseldorf. Happy New Year. Happy New Year; many happy returns of the day. Haw, yes, to be sure. Good morning.
11:25 A.M. — “Miss McKerrel, permit me to wish you a happy new year. Tears and clouds in the outside world, smiles and light wherever you are. Thank you. I shall be only too much honored.
It was evident that Mr. Finkhouser thought he had just about got it, as all his subsequent efforts were modeled upon this one. Note by the translator.
11:50 A.M. “Ah, my dear Miss Ballana hack, I have the inexpressible felicity to wish you a happy New Year. The light and smiles of your presence dislocates the sombre clouds and dismal tears of the weather god.”
12:40 – “My dear Mish Binnington, I have thinexpressible felicity t’wish you a happy New Year. The smiles and light, f’your presences dispates the sombre clouds and dismal tears of th’ weather god.”
2:30 p.m.—“Ah! Mdear Mish Washingham, f’y ‘low me t’call you so. I have inexpressible flicity t’wish you Happy New Year. Thlight an schmilesh f’your bri’ presence dishpate the sombre clouds an’ dismal tear of th’ weather god.”
3:45 p.m.—“Howdy, howdy, Mish Milleroy! Wish may have th’ flictable expressitive t’wish ye hampy n’y’er, fack! Th’ bri’ shimlesh an’ light f’your preselece dishlocates clomber souds an’ tearful dismals of threather gog!”
4:30 p.m.—“Howja fine y’self? ic! ‘m all rt. Have ‘nfeliseible ‘spression t’wishye haply newy’r. Hoopee doodle! I guess not! Shimleh f’your presesh dishlocatesh weather gog! Goodby, gubby. Bo good t’yersef.”
And at this point the entries, which continue some distance further, become unintelligible.
Janesville [WI] Daily Gazette 10 January 1876: p. 1
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: In Gilded Age America, the making and receiving of New Year’s Day calls was something of a competitive sport. Society ladies boasted of the number of their callers, while young dandies boasted of their numerous visitations and of the liquid refreshments they had consumed. Mr Finkhouser was unusual only in his candid description of the inevitable dishpation resulting from a day’s rounds.
Drink was only one of the attractions of New Year’s Day receptions; eligible young ladies were the objective of multiple beaux, who flitted in and out, bestowing compliments and bonbons in this early version of “speed-dating.”
[T]he Sunday papers of the time began to print lists of those who would receive, and the houses of those mentioned in the lists were sure to be besieged by numbers of men whom the ladies had never met or heard of and desired never to meet again. Men would go calling in couples and parties, and even in droves of thirty or more, remaining as short a time at each stopping place as possible, and announcing everywhere how many calls they had already made and how many they expected to make before they finished. At every place they drank, and at each place, of course, a different brand of wine. The result was a most appalling assortment of “jags” long before sundown, and a crowding of the police stations at night. Naturally enough the second day of January was always a field day in the police courts, and the judges, some of whom probably had post-calling headaches themselves, were wont to mark S.S. for “sentence suspended,” after the name of every one who could show that he had made a beast of himself in the observance of the “good old Knickerbocker custom.”
The Fort Payne [AL] Journal 6 January 1897: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil wishes all of her readers every good thing in the New Year!
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Tableaux of Fortune, Cupids Dream and the Years Forecast By Electricity
A very new Halloween play and one which will be carried out most beautifully even to its most minute detail in a very fashionable set of New York young people is a “game” called the tableau of fortune. And let it be stated right here that all entertainments on Halloween night are called “games,” although l they may not partake of the nature of play nor yet be intended for the juvenile members of the family.
After the audience is seated, little tickets are distributed until each has a slip of pasteboard. Upon the slip there is the date, the initials of the hostess, a blank space, some little ornamentation like a bit of hand decoration, and a number.
In front of the audience hangs a curtain, while palms at either side, and just visible rearing their heads behind it, prepare the guests for something very fine to come.
There is a tinkle of a bell and number one appears with a big figure, mysteriously lowered over the upper edge of the curtain.
“Who holds number one?” asks the mistress of ceremonies.
“My card is number one,” replies some one–say Miss Brown.
“Well, Miss Brown, I have the honor to announce that the coming tableaux will reveal your fortune for the coming year. Note carefully the picture. It will be repeated in your own life within a twelvemonth. Let the curtain rise!”
As the curtain is pulled away there stands revealed a bride, in full bridal costume. There is the trailing high-necked gown of white, the veil, the orange blossoms, the prayer book—nothing is lacking. Of course the bride is very beautiful and the tableau is a pretty one, without considering the joy which must have been experienced by Miss Brown at the thought of herself so beautifully arrayed “within a year.”
When number two is called and the owner of the number has responded to it, the curtain again is drawn aside. This time the owner of the tableau is less fortunate, for the picture is that of a Cinderella seated by the fireplace in rags. Her shoes show the need of a fairy godmother and adown her tear-stained face the tears are still falling. A little histrionic talent and some knowledge of stage effects might not be disadvantageous here.
The next tableau, number three, may show the fairy godmother with her arms filled with finery for Cinderella, while that young lady with her back to the audience, leans toward her godmother. This would typify that young lady No. 3 will have trouble the beginning of ’95, but that love will clear a way before the year is ended.
The curtain rolls back and number four sees herself seated before a mirror giving the last touches to her face with powder puff and rouge pad. There are tiny half-moon patches upon her face, and her hair is piled high, powdered and stuck full of ornaments. She has ear-rings and is laden with jewels. If the mirror faces the audience there will be the very pretty effect of the face reflected in the glass. This tableau is extremely taking and typifies growing vanity.
CUPID’S DREAM.
Cupid’s Dream Is the sentimental title of a Halloween game which is to be produced in a large gathering of young people with tremendous effect. The cupid In a marble figure about two feet in height with an arrow in its hand. The bow is drawn and Cupid shoots his dart apparently straight at the heart of the victim.
If desired a small child could act as Cupid, or a terra cotta figure be substituted for the marble. Or, indeed, any Cupid at all might be used.
The game begins with a dialogue.
“Miss A’s love affair will now be decided. Is Miss A present?”
“I am here,” replies Miss A.
“Are you ready to know your fate in love?”
“I am ready.”
“Cupid, reveal your knowledge!”
Instantly to a musical tinkle of a silver bell, or a chime if it can be arranged, the curtain goes back–and there stands the marble Cupid. Upon him plays a clear blue light, and the audience is hushed with admiration, while all the time the bells tinkle most sweetly.
“Miss A, you will be very fortunate in love, and before the year Is ended you will have become engaged to the man of your choice, who will be a paragon of manly perfections.”
The bells tinkle until the curtain has closed. Then comes the dialogue over again. This time it is addressed to Miss B.
When the curtain goes back it is to the sound of a thin, shrill bell that rings in a monotonous way. There is no music in the light, and Cupid is bathed in a green light. The bell continues until the curtain is drawn over the unhappy sight.
“Miss B., you will love a man who adores you as well, but who is extremely jealous. His jealousy will mar your happiness.”
While Miss B’s friends are advising her what to do with a jealous man, Miss C is called, and Cupid appears again. This time there is a tolling of the bell—a very deep tolling—and poor Cupid is flooded with a deep yellow light.
“Unrequited love!” announces the master of ceremonies.
A lovely white light plays upon Cupid at Miss D’s name. And the interpretation is, “Will remain heart and quite fancy free.”
All the shades of color are shown, according to their meanings, and the delighted audience openly regret when no more Cupid Dreams are to be seen. To arrange the colored lights the room must be darkened. A gas jet back of the audience must be supplied with a pipe with a large gas burner upon it. In front of the burner there are regular calcium light slides of all colors easily taken out and replaced.
All Halloween games must have the element of luck introduced. Nor can they possibly be without love. But by the skilful blending of these two qualities a Halloween entertainment may be interesting to all–even to those with this world’s love affairs already decided. In the affair of this kind surprises are always in order and the more of these the merrier.
A. P.
The Salt Lake [UT] Herald 28 October 1894; p. 13
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It is quite curious how a religious festival celebrating the spirits of the dead returning to roam the earth for a night became so entangled with amorous divination rituals. We have seen this before in the fancies of “Nut Crack Night.”
One wonders if the mistress or master of ceremonies sent out spies beforehand to ascertain romantic entanglements or aversions before so blithely predicting unrequited love for a party guest. It seems as though the result would inevitably be the unhappy young woman rushing from the room in floods of tears and when next heard of, taking solemn vows in some austere convent. Surprises are not always in order….
Mrs Daffodil feels that such artistic tableaux should be on the order of “Twenty Questions,” where the guests have to guess the identity of the gentleman seen leaving the apartments of the young bride recently wed to the aged financier. Alternately, the “game” might expose a well-known gentleman as a card-cheat and a cad, at which he would quietly take his hat, and then flee the country before the ports could be watched. Hours of wholesome amusement and one needn’t enlist a child or a terra cotta cupid.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Everybody on the West Side knows Barney Sullivan. He drives a hearse for a Madison street undertaker. He wears a fuzzy old plug hat and a monkey-fur cape. Barney also takes great pride in his whiskers. They are of a pleasing though rather tyrannical red, and exude only from his chin.
Not long ago Barney met the Widow McGraw, whose husband was killed last summer in the Burlington yards. It was at a wake that Barney became acquainted with the Widow McGraw. Barney was invited to call, which he did, and on leaving it was arranged that they should go buggy-riding Sunday afternoon if the day was fine.
Barney forgot all about engaging a rig until 10 o’clock yesterday morning. He went to several stables on the west side, but could not hire a horse for love or money. There wasn’t a horse or buggy to be had in all Chicago. As a last resort he hitched up a team of cream-colored horses to a white hearse and started for Prairie avenue. In front of where the widow is employed he turned in so close that the wheels of the hearse scraped against the curbstone.
People in the neighborhood went out on the front steps to inquire who was dead. Presently Barney and the widow came out of the house and mounted the driver’s box. They drove in impressive dignity down Drexel boulevard, and then turned the heads of the cream-colored horses toward Jackson Park. Thousands of persons saw the strange vehicle circling around the park, but they didn’t know what to make of it. Barney and the widow paid no attention to the caustic comments made upon them from time to time. They enjoyed the drive as well as they would have done in a landau.
For on the way home it was all planned that the Widow McGraw will soon change her name to Sullivan.
Philadelphia [PA] Inquirer 22 March 1891: p. 9
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil wishes the couple joy, but to be punctilious about a point of etiquette, a white hearse, while no doubt a lovely spectacle, is meant only for the youthful and the previously unmarried, which the Widow McGraw emphatically was not.
There was also a popular superstition that to see a hearse or mourning-coach on one’s wedding day was an ill-omen for the marriage. Mr Sullivan is fortunate that the lady of his choice not only did not recoil in horror at his choice of vehicle, but took pleasure in the ride and the company, despite the circumstances, hinting at a character of rare flexibility and amiability, and suggesting that their home life will be a happy one.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
I am no longer a young girl. The age of illusions is over with me, and that which I state now, I state with a calm conviction in its truth which no amount of incredulity can shake. It is many years ago since I was a school-girl. It chanced that I formed a friendship with a girl of my own age, but not of my own temperament. Our physiques differed as widely as did our fates. She had been christened Emmeline, but to me, and to others of her familiars, she was always Milly Deane. A handsome brunette, with a wealth of colour and vitality about her that made of her large-pupilled grey eyes two dancing stars, and of her rounded firm cheeks two ever-blooming roses. A fine upright girl, whose attitudes never required correction at the tongue of the stiffest of governesses, and whose back never was condemned by the ignominy of a board. In the days of which I write, if Milly Deane was a fair embodiment of night, I was a fairer one of morning ; for I had waves of feathery ringlets of bright gold, when she had pounds of bonny brown ones ; and pale pink roses in my cheeks in place of her crimson blooms. The daughters of the royal tribe of wanderers–those dusky flowers who break into bloom all over the land simultaneously whenever the sun shines genially–had told our fortunes over and over again. I, Annette Davant, was to love, and be loved by, a dark gentleman, whose lot was cast in India, whither I was to accompany him, and live a life of Oriental splendour, amongst elephants, and punkahs, and Cashmere shawls. Milly, on the contrary, was to marry young young and happily a gentleman who rolled in wealth in the city, and to have a large family, and a long life, and everything else that the heart of woman can desire. We accepted these prophecies with assumed incredulity, and real belief. We left school the same quarter, and came out at the same county ball. Our homes were not very far apart. Milly Deane’ s home was in the high street of a flourishing country town; a tall, square, considerable mansion of red brick, with white stone copings, which her father had bought the freehold of on his attaining the position of first solicitor in the neighbourhood. My home was more exclusively situated. It was an old, rambling, picturesque Grange, in the environs of one of the prettiest villages of Norfolk. A house with an oaken parlour, and a cedar room in it, with a grand old grey-balustraded terrace in front of it, and with our coat-of-arms carved massively on a shield over the entrance door. It was in this house that I came home to live just before Milly Deane and I made our debut at the county ball. Ours was a very small family. It consisted only of my mother and myself. Our household was composed of a number of old, stolidly-unimaginative servants, who had lived with us for years, and to whom our interests and our nerves were of the dearest consequence. They were tenacious, too, about the regulation of the house. Idle rumour asserted it to be haunted by a discreditable ancestress, but none of those then resident in the house had either seen anything or heard anything when I left school with Milly Deane. In the order of things–at least in what appeared to be the order of things to young girls’ minds–my favourite schoolfellow and I deemed it incumbent upon ourselves to spend a large portion of our time together. It was easy enough to ride and drive over to see one another constantly; but that did not satisfy us. Friendship demanded that we should stay at each others’ houses–that our morning aspirations and evening conclusions should be breathed in each others’ ears–and the demands of friendship were attended to. We did these things, and I don’t know that we were ever the worse for doing them, in spite of the current scepticism which mocks at all that it does not understand.
The county ball, at which Milly Deane and I were to make our first appearance as grown-up and eligible young ladies, came off in the Christmas week of 1850. It had been the source of joy and woe to us both for at least a fortnight previously– that is to say, we were charmed at the idea of going–but, as became young women to whom it was still left to make the first impression, we stood very much upon the order of our going, and were severe, even in our slumbers, with audacious dressmakers, who presumed to hold adverse opinions to ours on the important subject of when it was needful for our costumes to come home. For several days before the great event Milly had been staying at the Grange with me, sharing my room, as well as my costumes, cares, and creating a feeling of dismay in the minds of one or two of our old servants by her obstinate persistence in stating that the house was haunted. It was about a week before the ball that she confided her conviction to me, first quite calmly. I had run up hurriedly into my room one afternoon, when darkness was just creeping over things, meaning to dress quickly for the dinner, that my dear mother never liked to have kept waiting. I burst into the room, with my hat and habit on, my hair blowing about somewhat loosely, and my whip in my hand, just as I had come in from riding since two o’clock. Candles were burning on my dressing table, and, by the fire, Milly stood ready dressed in a soft amber silk, which became her dark glowing beauty well. She was speaking and laughing as I came into the room; and, to my surprise–for I made sufficient noise–she did not look up at my entrance. The words I caught were, “Will call me the yellow crocus still, for I wore this dress the last night he saw me.” I looked round the room in an instant. There was no one but ourselves in it. She must have been speaking to herself–yet that was never a habit of hers. In that instant my face had time to pale, and my flesh had time to creep. “Milly,” I exclaimed, and she looked straight at me without the slightest start or hesitation. As her gaze fell upon me, though, she gave vent to a surprised ejaculation, “Annette, how have you managed to metamorphose yourself in this minute?” she asked quickly, and I said–“In this minute, indeed! I am very much as I have been ever since I started for my ride, I believe.” Milly Deane came and put her hand on my shoulder. and looked at me with bewildered eyes. ” You came in some time ago, Annette–half an hour ago, at least.” she said earnestly. “I didn’t. I wish I had; I shall be late for dinner, as it is.” I answered, beginning to hurry off my riding gear. “But you did.” she repeated emphatically. “How silly of you to try to mystify me! why you should have taken the trouble to put on your habit again, puzzles me.” “I have never had it off, Milly,” I said, rather crossly; “it is you who are trying to mystify me, talking to yourself aloud, and arraying yourself in amber silk, as if some one was coming.” “I was not talking to myself, I was talking to you,” she said, indignantly; “and you told me yourself to put on this dress, when you said Captain Danvers was coming.” “I have never spoken to you since luncheon,” I said, “and as to Captain Danvers, I have never even heard of him.” Her face blanched, as I spoke, with a sort of horror that quickly reflected itself in mine. “You never told me to put on this dress because he was coming?” she said. interrogatively. “No, I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Do go and ask Mrs. Davant if you didn’t come with that message to me, half an hour ago. Stay! I’ll come too. I dare not be alone now.” “I shall not face mamma until dinner is ready,” I said, going on with my dressing. “Half an hour ago I was two miles away from home, in the middle of the common, on Cock Robin.” “Then the house is haunted,” Milly said; “and I have seen and spoken to a spirit. And it was like you,” she added stammeringly; and then she sat down, and seemed to be trying to collect herself. I had a very natural elucidation to offer, both to her and to myself, of this seeming mystery. “You probably sat down by the fire when you came up to dress?” I asked her. She nodded assent. “There is the clue to your mental maze.” I said, rather scornfully. “The heat overcame you, and you slept and dreamt a dream that has bothered you.” “It may have been a dream; but if it was, I am not awake now,” she said, slowly; “it was so vivid–so horribly vivid. I will just tell you how it all happened or how it seemed to happen,” she said. “I was sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown, when you came quickly into the room, dressed in a blue silk, with a quantity of Christmas roses in your hair and on your bosom. You didn’t look at me, but you said, ‘Make haste, and dress yourself in your amber silk, Milly; mamma wishes it.’ And when I asked, ‘Why?’ you said, ‘Oh! because Captain Danvers is coming to dinner.’ Then you went again, and I dressed: and that is all.” “A dream!” I said laughing. “Now, I am ready: mamma will think you crazy when she sees you such a swell. Who is Captain Danvers?” “An army officer,” Milly said, with a young country girl’s pride in knowing a military man. “I saw him several times while I was up in London with my aunt.” “You never mentioned him to me,” I said. “I know that,” she said, blushing a little. “I made myself a goose about him, so aunt said,” she continued, laughing, “and so I have held my tongue about him since; but I was very glad indeed when you told me just now that he was coming here to dine.” “When you dreamt it,” I insisted; and then we went in to dinner, and told this joke, as we both began to consider it, to mamma.
By the time the ball came off, we had nearly forgotten Milly’s vision, as she would insist on calling it. It does not in the least matter my mentioning now, at this distance of time, that Milly and I were the rival belles of the evening. We were young, we were fresh, we were pretty–above all, we were new. Being both under the wing of the same chaperone, we met at long intervals during the progress of the ball, and in the midst of my own triumphs I found time to notice that Milly was frequently on the arm of a handsome, distinguished looking man, a stranger, who was in the uniform of an infantry regiment. “That is Captain Danvers, Annette,” she had time to whisper to me once in the evening; and from the tone of that whisper I judged that she fancied she had met with her fate. I soon knew Captain Danvers very well indeed; for shortly after that ball, he became Milly Deane’s declared lover. I have called him distinguished looking, and so he was to our girlish eyes. Perhaps if we looked at him with the matured vision of to-day, we might substitute the word unhealthy for distinguished, and be considerably nearer the mark. But in those days he was, if not a god of beauty, a very fair object of admiration to us. He was very tall and very slight, and his hair and eyes were both black and shining, and his face was of almost a ghastly pallor. Unquestionably he was a very striking looking man; and we stricken ones, in those early days, pronounced him an Apollo. He talked in a way that was quite new to us both, too. We trembled, but admired, when he avowed his beliefs, which were few, and his non-beliefs, which were many. His shallow scepticism, and his mystical metaphysical allusions, seemed to be very brilliant things to us in those early hours of our luckless intercourse with him. Yet all the time I felt him to be a dangerous man and wondered how Milly’s infatuation would terminate for herself.
They were married in about four months from the ball at which they had renewed their acquaintance. Milly went off to India almost immediately with her husband, and so we parted, my pretty friend and I. And soon a romance of my own swept her romance from my mind and memory, although for herself I had a warm affection still. I settled down into the happy wife of a prosperous man, and the proud mother of fair good children. Milly and I corresponded with tolerable regularity. Of her husband she never spoke after the first six months or so of her marriage. That she was a disappointed and unhappy woman I could not fail to perceive.
At the end of five years Mrs. Danvers came home alone on a sort of sick leave which had been granted her by her husband. We were living in London at the time, and it seemed to me only natural that my solitary friend should have made our house her home. The very morning after her arrival in town I went to the hotel at which she had given me her address, and solicited her to do so. But she refused decidedly at once, saying that she was better alone for many reasons. I questioned her closely, with the loving curiosity my affection for her entitled me to display, as to how she was wont to pass her time, and whether her husband and herself were sympathetic in their pursuits or not. “Very sympathetic!” she said once, rather harshly. “We both like to please ourselves.” “Have I been superseded, Milly?” I persisted. “Have you any female friend in India who seems nearer and dearer to you than I do?” “I haven’t a female friend besides yourself in the world,” she said, quietly; “not one I assure you, Annette; not one that I would go a yard out of my way to confide a joy or a sorrow to.” “You would confide both to me if we were thrown much together again,” I said, determined not to be rebuffed. “Not trivial ones.” “Great ones, then?” I said. She moved uneasily off the sofa on which she had been reclining, and stood with her back to me, gazing out of the window. “Great ones, perhaps,” she said slowly, after a long pause.
“Annette,” and she turned round suddenly upon me, “shall I promise you that in the greatest trouble of my life I will come to you? I will so promise if you wish it.”
“You may not be able to come to me,” I began protesting. I was going on to say, “but I hope you will always write to me if–,” but she interrupted me. “I may not be able to come to you in the flesh,” she said emphatically ; and I answered “That is exactly what I meant; but you will write?” She nodded her beautiful head and said,–“I promise that, in my greatest trouble, I will come to you, Annette; and you, on your part, promise that you will not shrink from me.” An interruption occurred just then, and we never renewed the subject. “Annette,” she said to me one day, when we were sitting alone, talking over schoolgirl days, “have you a blue dress trimmed about the body and sleeves with Christmas roses?” “No,” I said, laughing; “haven’t you forgotten my ghostly visitation to you yet?” “No, I haven’t forgotten that ghostly visitation, and I never shall forget it.”
Milly Danvers stayed in England about eight months ; then she re-embarked for India, “which I shall probably never leave again,” she said sadly. “Does the climate try you so very much?” I asked anxiously. “Cruelly! cruelly!” she said warmly; “I can’t live there long.” “Does Captain Danvers know this?” I asked, indignantly. “Yes, dear champion of mine;” she said, affectionately. “Why else should he wish me back?” she said, curling her lip a little; “of course he knows it. Captain Danvers would not miss me–” “Oh, yes, he would!” I interrupted, hastily; her tone was so desperately despairing, that I could not bear it. “Oh, yes, he would! why else should he wish you to go back to him?” “Because no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death there,” she said; and then she peremptorily decreed that nothing more should be said about it. We parted very soon after this, and when I heard from her that she had arrived in their cantonment in the Madras Presidency safely, the gloomy impression upon my mind by our last interview faded away.
Months passed away, and Christmas-tide was upon us. We had arranged a juvenile party on the occasion of our eldest child’s seventh birthday, and. in decking out my little men and women, and arranging my rooms, I overlooked that usually important matter–my own toilette. A couple of days before our juvenile ball, I laughingly told my husband of my dilemma. “I haven’t a ball dress fresh enough to wear in honour of our little Milly,” I said to him, “and really I have no time to go to my dressmaker.” “I will go and order you one; leave it to me, Annette,” he replied; and I agreed to do so, only stipulating that he should not make me too fine, and that he should avoid pink. The night of little Milly’s ball arrived in due season; and, fatigued with my exertions, I went up to my dressing-room, determined upon resting until it was time for me to dress. My robe had not come home yet, but I could rely on Madame Varcoe’s honour–she had said that it should be home by half-past eight at the latest, and I knew that she would keep her word. Feeling thus easy, I fell asleep, and slept a dreamless sleep of some hour and a half. Then I awoke, and found my dress laid out ready for me to put on, and my maid waiting to do my hair. “It’s one of the prettiest dresses Madame Varcoe has ever made for you,” my maid said, as I cast a glance towards the bed, “a most delicate rich blue, trimmed with the most loveliest Christmas roses.” Strange as it may appear–at least, strange as it does appear to me now–I gave no thought at the time to the coincidence between my actual dress and the dress of Millv Deane’s dream. My head was full of other things, and memory was effectually put to flight by the entrance of my three little girls, vociferously declaring “that I should be late, and that it seemed as if people were never coming.” But the little guests came all in good time, and enjoyed themselves almost as much as I did. I say almost as much as I did advisedly, for that must be the happiest ball for a woman which she organises for the first time for her eldest child. At any rate, I can imagine no higher Terpsichorean happiness than this. Yet the day has been (not so very long ago either) when I enjoyed a ball as gaily as the gayest.
It was over at last, and when I had seen my pleased and sleepy children safely into their respective beds, I went slowly to my own room, and sat down by the fire to wait for my husband. I had told my maid that I would dispense with her services, and so I sat alone, and pleased myself with recalling the little ebullitions of childish pleasure which I had witnessed that night. My husband was down in his study still, looking through the evening papers, the late editions of which had been neglected by him in his endeavours to contribute to the little people’s entertainment. It must have been about two o’clock in the morning when I roused myself from my cheerful reverie, and stood up to commence my preparations for retiring for the night. The chair I had been occupying was a large massive carved oak one, with a very high back. As I stood up, I became conscious, without seeing anything, that some one was leaning on this back, and, thinking that it must be my husband, I said quietly, “You have come at last, dear?” “At last,” a very soft voice whispered–breathed rather; and then I turned round startled, and saw nothing on the spot from whence the voice had proceeded. A nameless horror, a dreadful fear possessed me. I could not cry out; even in my agony of fear I revolted against doing that. When I could move–and for a few moments I was quite unable to do so–my impulse was to get nearer to the gas, which was low, and turn on a brighter light. I had two lamps in my room, one on either side of my cheval glass; and as I reached up to turn on a higher light, I caught sight of myself. I was in just such a dress as Milly had described me as wearing when she saw me, or fancied that she saw me, or dreamt that she saw me. Sick and horrified, and chilled with a more than mortal dread, I staggered back to my chair, and buried my face in my hands. Something swept softly up to me from a darker corner of the room, swept softly up and stood beside my chair. I felt the air grew heavier, as occupied air does grow. I heard low breathings; some one was bending over me nearer and nearer. Then the breathings formed themselves into words, into a word rather, and I heard my own name murmured distinctly,
“Annette, Annette,” and I knew that it was murmured in Milly Danvers’ voice. I shuddered, and tried to look up. I took my hands down from before my face, and strove to lift my eyes and strove in vain. I could not do it. I had a dread of being so awfully frightened that I might never recover it. That Milly Danvers was standing close to me I was well assured. But I was also well assured that it was not Milly Danvers in the flesh. Then I remembered the words she had spoken to me. “I will promise to come to you in the greatest trouble of my life,” she had said ; and I felt, as her words flashed back upon me, that my friend must be in fearful trouble now. Again the impalpable presence spoke, “Annette, remember the hour! note it!” Shiveringly, shudderingly I raised my eyes at last, and there, gilding away into the shade by the side of the bed, I saw a slight frail form. Instantaneously I turned to my clock. The hour hand stood at three, the minute hand at five minutes past twelve. I grasped the bell, “all my soul within me sinking,” and rang such a peal as quickly brought my husband to my side. I wrote to Milly the following day, and I got no answer. I wrote again, and my second letter shared the fate of my first one. Then I gave up the attempt to elucidate whatever of mystery there was in the affair, and tried to forget it–and could not. Just twelve months after this I was spending the Christmas week, together with my husband, at the house of one of his married sisters in the country. We arrived just in time to dress for dinner, and in the brief interval between my going up to my room for that purpose, and being joined by my husband, my sister-in-law came to speak to me for a minute. “We have a goodly party dining here to-day, Annette,” she said. “Captain Danvers expressed the greatest pleasure at meeting you again.” “Captain Danvers! is he here?” ” He is, with his wife,” she said, shutting the door, and running off; and I was left alone, repeating to myself, “His wife! Then Milly is not dead!” and then we dressed, and went down to dinner. I recognised Captain Danvers the instant I got into the drawing-room. He was considerably altered; still I knew him at a glance. I looked round the room. Milly was not there. Impulsively I went up to him and asked, as I took his offered hand, “Where is your wife?” “She will be here in a few moments,” he answered, smiling his old, brilliantly flashing smile and the wild throbbing at my heart ceased. She was alive, and she was here! That was sufficient for me. I curbed my impatience, and stood still, watching the door. Two or three ladies, strangers to me, entered the room, and, a moment after, my brother-in-law asked a gentleman to take me down to dinner. We all went down. Captain Danvers was on the opposite side of the table, at some little distance from me. I looked round the table, and Milly was not there. The dinner that day seemed to be an endless affair to me. I was most impatient to ask our hostess where Mrs. Danvers was. I went to her the moment we got into the drawing-room, ” Where is Mrs. Danvers?” I said; “she is my dearest old friend, and I’m longing to see her.” “You might have renewed your acquaintance at the table, then, surely,” she said, pointing out a fair, pretty young woman whom I had observed sitting very near to me at dinner. “That Mrs. Danvers! impossible!” “But the truth, notwithstanding,” she said, laughing; “she is a bride, and a beauty, and altogether rather an acquisition to my Christmas party, I consider.” I was almost stunned at the revelation of Milly’s death; and when Captain Danvers, later in the evening, came sauntering up to me suavely, saying, “Now, at last, I can renew my very pleasant acquaintance with you,” I cut him short at once by saying, “Captain Danvers, when did Milly die?” “Last Christmas Eve,” he said. ” At five minutes past three?” I asked eagerly, and he said—“Yes.” And as he said it the two ghostly episodes which connected the three (Milly, Captain Danvers, and myself) together, stood out like bodily presences before my eyes.
My story is finished. Call it a ghost story, a fable, a fancy—what you will. I can only declare that the spiritual visitations actually occurred. Milly’s fate was never cleared up. She died, we learnt afterwards, after a long, tedious illness which defied the medical skill that was called in, nearly at the last, by her philosophically calm husband, Captain Danvers.
The Bradford [West Yorkshire England] Observer 18 November 1869: p. 6
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: How very solicitous of Captain Danvers to recall his ill and unhappy wife to that place where no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death–and where physicians called to a death-bed, are commendably discreet about the belated summons. One wonders whether the Captain (who had surely attained the rank of Colonel) retained the services of the same medical gentleman when he tired of his beauty of a bride.
Touching though it is to see the two friends reunited by the late Milly’s apparition, it would be far more satisfying to see the first Mrs Danvers haunt the Captain so that he would be found dead in his bed with an expression of stark, staring horror on his ghastly, pallid face and a scrap of amber silk clutched between his fingers.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Mourning veil, 1895 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bank’s Flirtation.
Mr. Banks and Mrs. Banks had had a falling out. She said that he didn’t spend enough of his time at home, and he told her that she was too much taken up with society to make home pleasant. That morning they agreed to separate and he slammed his hat on the back of his head, and left the room telling her that she could keep the house and furniture and do what she pleased with it. She was just vowing very sharply that she didn’t want anything to do with the old trash, when the front door slammed and he was gone. Then Mrs. Banks swallowed a few sobs that insisted on coming out, paid the hired girl and sent her away, and went up stairs to pack her valise so as to catch the next train which would take her to her mother’s home.
Banks went down town whistling dance tunes, breaking here and there into an abstracted quaver which made them sound strangely mournful. He sat down in his law office, and tried to work on a case, but it was of no use. He put on his hat, took up his cane and went down town. A huge poster met his eye, and informed him that rates to a town near Barnesville were very low. As he had an old college chum at Barnesville he concluded to take the opportunity to go and see him and talk it all over.
He boarded the train and found the out his pocket I usual excursion crowd on it Some ladies too, who seemed very much out of place, and full of regret because they had ventured to come, were there. One especially attracted his attention. She was dressed entire in black and wore a heavy veil. She was struggling up the steps with a heavy valise as the bell gave warning that the train was about to start. Banks gallantly came to her assistance and taking the valise out of her willing hand helped her on the platform, and found a seat for her. She thanked him merely with a nod, but she seemed to have a sort of fascination for Banks. He kept near at hand and was constantly tendering little services. She was apparently averse to acquaintances formed in this way and indicated very plainly by her manner, that his attentions were not pleasing.
In the course of a half hour the conductor came around for tickets. The little woman in black put her hand in her pocket and withdrew it, in evident consternation.
“It’s gone,” she said in a dismayed tone.
“What’s gone?” asked the conductor.
“My pocketbook and ticket too.”
Banks stepped up and said politely. “I trust you will permit me to offer some assistance in this dilemma,” at the same time taking out his pocket book.
“Never sir, never,” and she said it with an air that meant plainly that she would have a scene rather than accept his offer of help. “I will get off at the next station.”
” Very well,” said Banks. “Here is the station now. I think I will get off here too.”
When they reached the waiting room which was empty, Banks. handed her her valise which he had picked up and carried for her. She lifted her veil and looked him fiercely in the eye and said:
“Now sir, I have discovered you in the midst of your perfidy. You had no idea that you were pursuing your own wife with your wicked attentions, had you.” Here she burst into years. “O just to think that I was scarcely out of the house before you commenced trying to flirt with some other woman. I didn’t think it of you.”
“Didn’t you tell me this morning that I might forget you just as soon as I pleased?”
“Yes-es, but I didn’t mean it that way.”
“And you didn’t want me to forget you after all?”
“No; of course not.”
“Well, look here, Clara, there’s no use of crying about it It’s all right.”
“Don’t come near me any more.”
“But I knew it was you all the time.”
“Don’t try to deceive me. You could not recognize me.”
“No, but you see, I recognized my own name on your valise.”
The next train took them back home and he went out that evening and told the servant girl that she needn’t consider herself discharged.
The Sherman County Dark Horse [Eustis KS] 31 May 1888: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Two sundered hearts re-united–by a valise! Not, perhaps, the most romantic of plot devices, but, there–it will do. At least until the next time Mr Banks spends too much time out at lodge meetings. It would serve him right if she met him at the door at 2 am in her widow’s weeds–in mourning for the “late” Mr Banks. Which begs the question: why did she have a set of mourning clothing at the ready in her wardrobe? Was she, perhaps, so annoyed at his absences that she was preparing to poison his coffee?
The Wife Disguised, particularly at masquerade parties, is one of the hoariest chestnuts in the amusing anecdote file. We have read about “The Lost Columbine,” with its frisson of French intrigue. Then there is this naughty tale:
At Cornely’s Masquerade , last Monday, a pretty Fruit Wench attracted so forcibly the Attention of Lord Grosvenor that for two Hours she was the sole Object of his Flattery and Admiration. At length, worked up into an irresistible Want of forming an Alliance with her, he told her his Name, offered a Carte Blanche, and begged she would not delay his Happiness. The Lady whispered her Consent, but insisted upon continuing masked. The amorous Lord, overjoyed at the Conquest he had made, conducted his fair Inamorata to the Nunnery in Pall Mall, where, having praised and re-praised every Charm he beheld and enjoyed, he obtained Leave to untie the odious Mask that concealed the Beauty who had made him happy. What Pen, or Pencil, could paint or describe the ghastly Astonishment of his Lordship at the Sight of that Woman! What! my Wife, muttered he, shaking in every Limb! Lady Grosvenor burst into Laughter and left the Room, thanking him ironically for the Right he had given her to taste with Impunity of the forbidden Fruit.
The Virginia Gazette [Williamsburg VA] 14 May 1772
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
“I understand, then, you mean an elopement? Oh, surely, surely, Gerty, you never can be in earnest?”
Gerty Fane sat on a fallen log. whose mossy cylinder was half hidden in tall, plumy ferns, and where the trembling July sunbeams rained down through soft summer foliage like a cascade of gold. An artist would have painted her as a wood nymph. with her hair of braided sunshine, her deep, limpid eyes, and the peach-like bloom upon her perfect cheeks.
And yet this dew-eyed beauty was neither more or less than a factory girl, who worked a machine in the big shop whose gray stone chimneys rose out of the hollow below, at a dollar a day; a girl who had grown up on a diet of yellow-covered novels, and dreamed of knights and ladies and perilous adventures.
“Yes,” said Gerty, lifting her dew-blue eyes, “an elopement. Isn’t it romantic? And isn’t he handsome?”
Sarah Willis looked sadly down into the eyes that were so like blue flowers
“Gerty,” said she, “I beseech of you to think twice about this business. Have you forgotten Francis Tryon?”
“Francis Tryon! Only a cutter in the shop!”
“An honest, honorable man,” said Sarah, impressively.
“Why don’t you take him yourself, since he is such a paragon?” retorted Gerty, saucily.
“Because he loves no one but you.”
“Then he may leave off loving me at his leisure,” said Gerty. “I don’t care a fig for him, and never shall. I am going to marry Mr. Montressor; and I never would have told you of the elopement if I had supposed you were going to be so ill natured about it. My father is as unjustly prejudiced against him as you are, and so I am driven to it.”
And Gerty Fane tried to vail her exaltation beneath a tone of injury as she rose up and began to make her way through the tall ferns. Sarah looked wistfully after her.
“A spoiled, harmless little beauty!” she said to herself. “But Mr. Tryon was kind to me when I came here friendless and alone; and Mr. Tryon loves her; for his sake I will not stand quietly by and see her rush on to ruin.”
“You see,” Gerty Fane had told her, confidentially, “I am to go to the shop on Wednesday, just as usual, so that my father will not suspect anything, and then I am to feign a headache, just at train time, and leave work, step quietly on board the train, and go to Pittsburg; there I stop at the Hapgood house. He comes there the next day, and we’re married; and then we shall go to Saratoga, or Newport, or Long Branch, or some of those aristocratic places; and won’t it be charming?”
But Sarah Willis shook her head dubiously.
“I don’t like Mr. Montressor’s looks,” said she.
“He’s just exactly like that picture, ‘Lord Byron,” in the ‘Poets of England,'” retorted Gerty, triumphantly.
“He is only a traveling salesman.”
“But he’s to be a partner in the firm in the fall. He told me so himself, and he showed me the photograph of his employer’s daughter, who is madly in love with him.”
“Why don’t he marry her, then?”
And now Gerty dimpled into radiant consciousness. “I suppose because he likes me best.” said she.
“Oh, Gerty! and you believe all this farrago?” sighed Sarah, despairingly.
“You’re only jealous because you haven’t such a lover yourself,” retorted Gerty, frowning under her curls like a lovely, willful child. And then Sarah Willis abandoned the task of remonstrance. But for all that, the thought of Frank Tryon’s heart-break lay sore and heavy at her inmost soul.
“She may go to ruin her own way,” thought Sarah; “but she shall not drag him down with her. Montressor–Montressor I know I have heard the name somewhere–it carries a disagreeable remembrance with it. I remember now! It was a Mr. Montressor that boarded so long with Aunt Polly Sharker, and then went away without settling his score. George Gordon Montressor! that was the name! I’ll go see Aunt Polly this very night. I can easily get there on the train by 9 o’clock, and back again in time for work tomorrow morning. And if there is anything to be found out, I’ll find it! Francis Tryon was good to me once, and I shall never forget it.”
***
“Can I speak to you tonight, Gerty?”
Gerty Fane was hurrying away from the great workroom where the buzz of wheels was gradually decreasing, and the girls were beginning to look for their hats and shawls, when Francis Tryon advanced toward her.
“No!” she retorted, petulantly. “I’m in a hurry!”
“Then I will walk along toward home with you.”
“I’d rather go alone!”
He cast one sad, reproachful glance toward her and stepped back. “Gerty—” began he.
“I’m not Gerty, I’m Miss Fane.” said the girl, half defiant, half frightened. “And I’ll trouble you to keep your distance.”
And away she flew like an arrow out of a bow. She was just in time for the train that paused a minute at the solitary little depot in the woods, and, leaning back in the seat, reflected joyfully that she was already beginning the elopement.
Pretty, blossom-like little fool! How little had she calculated the end of her rash experiment! And yet to her it seemed that she was beginning to live romance.
It was toward 10 o’clock at night when the train stopped at Pittsburg. The Hapgood house was nearly opposite the terminus, a comfortable, old-fashioned wooden structure, its windows gleaming with lights, like the shine of friendly eyes; and thither Gerty bent her footsteps.
“Oh!” said the plump, motherly landlady, “it’s the young lady from Wardham village as a room was engaged for by Mr. Montressor. Number 16. Yes, it’s all right, Miss. Please to walk up. The lady’s there, waiting for you!”
“The lady?”
“Mrs. Montressor, you know,” said the landlady. “And a fine, handsome person she is, only a trifle stout, as we all is, when we gets toward 40 odd.”
Gerty stood as still and white as if she was turned to stone.
“His mother, I suppose,” she told herself, regaining courage. “How kind of him to send her here, to welcome me!”
At the same moment the landlady flung open the door of number 16, a small cozy room, with a bright lamp burning on the table.
“It’s the young lady, mem!” said she, dipping a courtesy.
And a fat woman, gayly dressed in cotton velvet and imitation lace, waddled forward.
“Oh!” said she, “good evening, my dear. So you’re the gal that’s goin’ to marry my husband?”
“Your husband?” echoed Gerty.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the fat woman, busying herself with the strings of Gerty’s hat. “We was divorced eight years ago. He couldn’t support me, and I wasn’t goin’ to support him. He’s had two wives since. But don’t worry. He’s got bills from both of ’em. One of ’em drank, and t’ other one said he drank. I guess they was both true! And now he’s shined up to you! Well. I guess you’ll get enough of him: a great lazy, drinkin’ vagabond, as was raised in Pork Hill workhouse, and served two terms in the penitentiary for forgin’ Lawyer Odderley’s name to a check for $50.”
Gerty stood pale and shocked.
“It is false!” gasped she. “You are inventing these lies to estrange me from him.”
“Bless your heart, my dear, no I ain’t,” said the fat woman, with a comfortable, chuckling laugh. “What should I gain by estrangin’ you from him? I don’t care. I’ve my marriage lines to show, and my papers of divorce, and Gordy’s welcome to marry as many new wives as Bluebeard, for all I care.”
Gerty turned to the landlady.
“How early does the first train for Wardham start in the morning,” said she.
“At 4 o’clock,” said the landlady. The railroad hands go down on it.” “So will I.” said Gerty. “And how about the gentleman as engaged the rooms?” questioned Mrs. Hapgood.
“I’ll never speak to him again!” said Gerty, with spirit.
She was at her machine the next morning, as usual, and when Frank Tryon came past she looked up shyly into his face.
“Please, Mr. Tryon,” she said, “won’t you forgive me for being so cross with you last night? I–I am very sorry. And if you can walk home with me tonight–”
That was enough for Mr. Tryon. They were engaged before the moon was an hour high that night!
For Gerty’s fancy could not endure the idea of being fourth or fifth wife to a man who had once graced the penitentiary, and Mr. Montressor never beheld his pretty fiancee again.
And Sarah Willis kept the secret of her elopement well. The Shippensburg [PA] Chronicle 12 September 1889: p. 1
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: A spoilt little beauty she may be, but Gerty is far from harmless. Her engagement to Mr Tryon is one best characterised as “rebound.” Mrs Daffodil wonders if there had not been quite so many Mrs Montressors–if she had been, say, only the second wife–if she would have gone through with the elopement. One fears that Gerty will continue to sigh over yellow-covered novels and long for perilous adventures. Sooner than later she will tire of the faithful Mr Tryon for whom she does not care a fig and run off with some plausible, Byronesque drummer with a wife and five children back in Buffalo. If there was any justice in this world, Mr Tryon, hurt by Gerty’s refusal, would have walked home with Sarah Willis and immediately awakened to her kindliness and goodness, recognising that Gerty’s dew-blue eyes and hair of braided sunshine concealed a cankered heart. One does not like to dwell on the sequel to this “happy ending.”
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
“Will you be my summer girl?” he asked, as she sat on the rail in front of him. her sailor hat aslant of her rippling locks and her pretty little feet swinging in front of her.
“Do you want me to be?” she asked.
“Do I want you to be? Yes, assuredly, I want you to be.”
“And what will you do for me if I am your summer girl?”
“Everything. I’ll dance attendance; I’ll be your slave. I will feed you with chocolates, and ice cream, and–”
“I will be your summer girl.” and she held out her little brown hand “Thank you; you’re very kind, and I am delighted.”
“But, tell me. what does being a summer girl consist of?”
“Why, the most delightful, unfettered companionship–nothing serious on either side no promises–no false hopes–just a sort of mutual attention, don’t you know.”
“That suits me perfectly–yes, I’ll be your summer girl.”
That was the way it began. And what a summer girl she was to be sure. How she tripped through green fields with him, picking wild flowers and singing her merry songs. How she pulled away at the oars of the little cedar boat, with her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, calling upon him to watch the rounded muscle as it swelled her pretty arms.
But if these things were attractive how infinitely more attractive was the way she fell into calling him “Harry, ‘ and the pleasant little familiarity with which she treated him. It was not a sisterly familiarity exactly, not friendly one, and not the familiarity of one jolly good fellow for another, yet it smacked of all three, with a little touch of sentiment thrown in and a certain off-handedness to tone it down.
“You are an ideal summer girl,” he said to her one evening in the moonlight–“absolutely ideal.”
“Thank you,” she returned demurely; “I am glad I suit your majesty.”
“You are not glad. You don’t care a bit.”
She laughed merrily.
“What does that make me out?” she asked.
“Oh, only a summer girl,” he responded.
Unfortunately, summer days cannot go on forever, and toward the end of August there comes a chilling breeze across the waves, which shrivels up summer things, and makes one begin to think of heavier flannels and felt hats.
He had passed through the chummy stage, the brotherly stage, even the cousinly stage, and he had now reached a point where all feeling of relationship ceases, and where the desire for relationship begins. The little sprite was going home. The rolling waves would resound no longer to the music of her voice.
“Kitty–don’t let it be good-bye. Don’t say it’s all over. I love you, Kitty. You’re not only a summer girl, are you?”
“But, Harry, you only asked me to be a summer girl.”
“I know, dear, but now I ask you to be something else.”
The sprite laughed and shook her head.
“Too, late, old fellow,” she murmured–“too late! Jack Hilton asked me to be his all-the-year-round girl, and I have consented. You’ve had what you asked for, Harry.”
New Castle [PA] Herald 27 July 1909: p. 7
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Well! The heartless minx! How dare she take Harry at his word and be merely the “ideal Summer Girl?” Mrs Daffodil wonders how long Harry nursed a grudge against Kitty. Obviously he assumed that she would, in the time-honoured tradition of newspaper short fiction, fall helplessly in love with him.
This next examination of the Summer Girl species is particularly distasteful about her “convenience” and her “cheapness”–attributes more suited to lauding washing-up powders than young ladies. It also likens her to a sweet, but transient fruit.
Mrs Daffodil will remain frigidly silent about the notion of “cling” kisses required of the Summer Girl.
THE SUMMER GIRL
Charming Creature Who Reigns Supreme During the Heated Term.
The summer girl is a peculiarly American product, says the Trenton Times. No other soil, so far as known, has ever produced her. She seems to have been discovered several years ago by some college students, and has since been cultivated to a large extent all over the country. She is a very popular creature in certain quarters, possesses undoubted charms and has her advantages. It might not be amiss just now to enumerate a few of her uses.
The summer girl is a good convenience. She does not expect to be fondled and fed on dainties that during the winter. The young man who cultivated her acquaintance knows just when and where to find her. He is not expected to become acquainted with her before strawberry time. She does not display her fairy charms, so to speak, until the cream season is thoroughly ripe. The hammock in which she swings and the perforated sleeves that she wears do not appear before June.
The Summer girl is sentimental. Having an active existence only during the warm months, it becomes necessary for her to lay in a stock of sentiment during the three months that will last throughout the year. Therefore she is very sweet, very tender, very caressable. The young mail who claims her for his own for June to September is believed to have a very “soft” time of it. He is supposed in sentimental slang, to have all the hugging and kissing he wants. The Summer girl always has a supply of kisses on hand. It is true some of her kisses are rather stale, having been lent all Winter, but when they are warmed up they pass very readily for fresh ones. The young man who cultivates Summer girls is not very particular what kind of kisses he gets so long as they are the cling kind.
The Summer girl is pretty. If she wasn’t pretty she wouldn’t be a Summer girl. She wears a pretty girl’s dress, has a pretty girl’s teeth, and puts on a pretty girl’s smiles. She also has a dimple or two to add to the picture. She is usually plump, but not stout; well formed, but not rotund. The young man who pays for her strawberries and cream, and takes her to picnics where they play Copenhagen [a game where the boys chase the girls and claim a kiss] is always proud of her. The Summer girl never gets soiled or looks dirty. She even manages to keep her back hair in good shape after a hugging match.
The Summer girl is not very expensive. Her wishes are few and cheap. A row on the river now and then, an occasional buggy ride, a plate of ice cream on a warm evening and an escort to a picnic about once in two weeks nearly sums up her wants. Being only a summer girl, she does not expect those presents and that devotion that belong to the regular every-day-in-the-week and twice-on-Sunday-all-the-year-round girl. The Summer girl is more like some luscious fruit that comes only for a time and is gone for the year, but it is peculiarly sweet while it lasts.
The Leavenworth [KS] Times 5 August 1883: p. 2
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
American Girls Reviving the Fan, That Fit Symbol of Fluttering Femininity
Approach of Period of Coquetry Foreseen in New Popularity of Long Fashionable Appendage
By Esther Harney
Fans are coming back into vogue again. They never go out of fashion, of course, for they are as old as coquetry, as gallantry itself. But today they are appearing in full blaze of glory, a sure sign, we are told, that an age of coquetry and extreme femininity is approaching as a reaction from the stern period of the war.
Manufacturers will tell you this news happily. Not for years have they had so many orders for fans of every description from the hand-made lace and tortoise shell varieties of the duchess to the little inexpensive chiffon spangled fan which the high school girls “perfectly adore” to flutter at school “hops.”
Manufacturers will also tell you that there could be no stronger evidence of a general return on the part of woman to her ancient arts and wiles than this reinstatement of the fan. (They are qualified to speak—of course.) During the war there was little time for fans and for femininity. Nor in that period which preceded the war did woman fancy fans; instead she preferred a riding crop or a tennis bat. It was not the fashion then, you will recall, to be delicate and feminine.
But today with all our boys returning from overseas from harsh scenes of war and from other scenes and adventures (oh, the reputed wiles of les belles Francaises), American women are beginning to realize that they must rise to the occasion. Femininity must rule supreme. (The soldiers like womanly women, they say.) and as a symbol of lovely femininity the women have taken up the fan.
International Imagination.
Then, too, American girls are looking to France these days. (They are trying to cultivate an international imagination, you know.) And among the French, fans are popular. With them, for instance, the wedding fan is an important item of the marriage trousseau. And was it not Mme. E Stael who recognized an art in the graceful handling of the fan? “What graces,” she wrote, “are placed in woman’s power if she knows how to use a fan. In all her wardrobe there is no ornament with which she can produce so great an effect.” Verily the revival of the fan in American can be traced to the influence of France on the American doughboy…
All ages have contributed to the history of the fan. It has it pedigree like everything else. If a thorn was the first needle, no doubt a palm leaf was the first fan. Standards of rich plumage were present when the Queen of Sheba paid homage to Solomon. Queen Elizabeth gave the fan a place of distinction and was the cause of prosperity among the fan-makers of her day. She is said to have had as many as 30 fans for her use. During her reign ostrich feather fans were introduced in England. Charlotte Corday of French evolutionary fame is said to have used a fan expertly : She held a fan in one hand while she stabbed Marat with a dagger which she held in the other hand.
Great painters of all ages have tried their hands at fans. One famous artist spent nine years completing a fan for Mme. De Pompadour, which cost $30,000. Period fans arose to commemorate events, follies and fashions of the day. Besides an intermediary in the affairs of love a fan became a vehicle for satire, verse and epigram.
In the canons of “fanology” are described “the angry flutter, the modish flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, the amorous flutter.” A flutter for every type, you see.
American girls should then first choose their fan and then their flutter. Perhaps they will revive the art of miniature fan painting as a new profession for women. They should, of course, remember that they can learn much of the art of the fan from Europe (except from Germany. Can you fancy a German woman flirting with a fan?) and plan to obtain their practice on the back porch some hot July evening. That will surely amuse their soldier callers. And at least we all can afford a fan of the palm leaf variety. But if we must take up the fan, the symbol of the new age that is before us, just we also take up the spirit of the age in which it was wafted victoriously? Must we be Victorian?
Boston [MA] Herald 10 May 1919: p. 15
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: And what, Mrs Daffodil wishes to know, is wrong with being “Victorian?” Alas, the author of this piece was entirely too sanguine about a return to femininity. Far from becoming more womanly, young persons shingled their hair, abandoned proper corsetry, smoked in public, and adopted sexually ambiguous costumes and attitudes. The queenly curves of the pre-War years gave way to a flattened feminine figure that caused many physicians to despair of the continuation of the species. Still, in one detail, the author was correct: The beaded and brilliantined females who thronged the night clubs, did carry fans—immense, vampish affairs of ostrich feathers or sequined chiffon–but recognizably fans. One might suggest that these accessories lent their name to the Girl of the Period: the Flapper.
For a school of “fan-ology,” see this post. And for more details on how to select a fan, this post.
A vampish fan of the period.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Gems From the Engagement Rings of Thirteen Rejected Suitors.
[New York World.]
Engagement bracelets and bangles, hoops tied with knots of ribbon (one color for each adorer), are now surpassed according to a late story by a diamond necklace with a strange history. This necklace, set with thirteen stones, was confidentially declared by the wearer to be composed of the stones from thirteen engagement rings which she had worn at different times. Through a fine regard for the feelings of the thirteen “rejected addressers” this delicate-minded young woman had had them reset, and wore them suspended about her beautiful neck…. It is to be hoped for the sake of fair young womanhood that these “engagements” were like those in vogue at one time in Washington—simply a mutual arrangement by which a young man became for a certain time the acknowledged escort of a young belle, to whose service he felt himself bound, and to whom he furnished bouquets and bon-bons in return for the pleasure of taking her to receptions. In this frivolous but harmless kind of an engagements a young beauty of my acquaintance figured sixteen times, marrying at the end of her second season an army officer of culture and high rank. But she did not accept diamond rings or other valuable gifts from her soi-disant lovers.
The Enquirer [Cincinnati OH] 20 September 1890: p. 13
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Such ladies who trifled with the honest affections of gentlemen were shockingly common:
Emily: What are you crying over, dear?
Julia: Longfellow’s Evangeline! It makes me sad that women don’t appreciate love and constancy as they should.
(Servant enters with cards.)
Julia (after reading them): Chollie Jones and Freddie de Browne. Oh, how lovely! Come down with me and help in the fun. I am engaged to both of them.
Pittsburgh [PA] Dispatch 4 February 1889: p. 4
The old man laid down his newspaper. “My child,” he said to the fair girl in sables who had just come in, her cheeks pink and her eyes shining from the frosty air: “My child, I am unspeakably shocked and grieved. Your mother informs me you are engaged to five young men at once.” But. his daughter laughed and patted his shoulder in reassuring fashion.
“Dear old stupid dad, it’s all right,” she said. “They are football players, and at the end of the season I shall wed the survivor.”
“Oh,” said the father, and, his brow clearing, he resumed his reading.
Nelson [NZ] Evening Mail, 15 February 1908: p. 2
A young woman of Indiana keeps twenty seven engagement rings hung up in her boudoir, the spoils of five years.
Pittsburgh [PA] Weekly Gazette 25 January 1870: p. 1
First Ingenuous Maiden: “How do you like my engagement ring?”
Second Ingenuous Maiden. “Oh, it is the prettiest one you have had!” Tit-Bits.
Logansport [PA] Pharos-Tribune 21 January 1922: p. 4
The Summer girl was a particular offender:
“I have been engaged several times,” boasted the first summer girl, “to men whose names I did not know.”
“That’s nothing,” retorted the second summer girl. “I engaged myself last season to a stager [person of experience/ man of the world]who sig-wagged his proposal from a passing yacht.”
The Alamogordo [MN] News 28 July 1910: p. 7
This morning I was pouring out my lamentation to a young girl, the younger sister of a dear friend. She is at least seventeen, and rather beyond the kitten love period, but I thought it would do no harm to let her know the truth about this imitation of the noble passion by little chits. She quite agreed with me, she said, and then she went on:
“But I have a confession to make, Clara,” said she; “I am in a frightfully awful situation. You see I am engaged to be married in New York, and when I came up here I got engaged to a young fellow up here, you know, just for fun. He is rich, you know, and quite distinguished in appearance, but it wasn’t that which made me let him engage himself to me, so much as that all the other girls, that is, the nice girls, were head over heels after him. It was so pleasant to cut them out. Now, you see, I had done the same thing last summer. I was engaged to the same young gentleman in New York then (really engaged, you know) and I got engaged up here”
“For mercy’s sake!” I exclaimed; “what sort of a story are you telling me?”
“Why, it’s quite customary, Clara; that is, among girls of any life at all. You get engaged up here because it’s better all around. You select a
REALLY NICE, PROPER YOUNG MAN,
And you are both devoted to one another, and it takes up all your spare time; and then a parting you manage to quarrel (It’s quite easy to do it) and off he goes to Chicago or New Orleans, and you go home to your real beau. Well, as I was going to say, I managed it beautifully last season—quarreled all right, and never heard any more about it. But this year things are going to be different. I am in an awful scrape. This young man is a Southerner and he talks of shooting anybody that looks at me and of killing himself if I reject him, and oh, my! Oh, my! I can see that I’ll never, never be able to get rid of him.”
I did not sympathize with her. I might have suggested that she write to her New York young man to attend a shooting gallery and take lessons preparatory to an encounter with the Southerner, but I did not think it just exactly a fit subject for joking. But I am only telling you what success attended my effort to get away from the scourge of the summer resorts. To make it very short, it is just simply no success at all. Why, I strolled into the pretty and ancient grave-yard just at the edge of the village, and if there were not at least six couples tucked away on the grave-stones in the by-paths, and all courting at one hundred pounds pressure, I am no correspondent of yours.
Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 5 September 1886:p. 9
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
And Knew So Much That She Gave Her Steady Company the Mitten.
Chicago Times-Herald.
“You are worth your weight in gold,” he ventured to remark to the girl he had wanted to marry.
“Am I, indeed,” she returned, “and how much is that?”
“I don’t know the exact amount,” he replied, “but it’s a good deal.”
“Well, I am just going to find out how much you value me at I have been studying the money question lately and I have some books that will tell me.”
And she went to the library and returned with a report of the United States treasury department.
“Here it is. Pure gold is worth $20.86 an ounce. That is troy weight, with 7,000 grains to the pound. Have you a pencil and some paper, Mr. Chapleigh?”
“Oh, Lord,” he groaned.
“What’s that?” sharply.
“I only said, yes, certainly.”
“Well, figure on the value of a pound of avoirdupois; you know people are weighed by avoirdupois. Only precious metals and precious stones are measured.”
“You’re a jewel.”
“No nonsense. Figure it up.”
For five minutes he wrestled with the problem, until he felt his collar climbing up the back of his neck.
At length she inquired:
“Well, what is it?”
“I can’t do it.”
“Give me the paper. Yet they say men are so much better than women at figures.”
In half a minute she read the result.
“A grain of gold is worth $0.043066, so a pound avoirdupois is worth $301.462. I weigh 110 pounds. I am therefore worth, in your estimation, $33,150.82–my weight in gold. In that case, Mr. Chapleigh, I think you had better marry Miss Greenwood; she is worth $50,000. She inherited it from her father. Good day, Mr. Chapleigh.”
Democrat and Chronicle [Rochester NY] 15 November 1896: p. 5
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil considers that Mr Chapleigh had a fortunate escape from the very literal-minded lady. Her contempt for his mathematical prowess would outweigh any good qualities he might bring to the marriage and before long, one would find him quailing under her censure and slinking off to his Club to drink alone in despair, all the while contemplating faking his own death and running off to South America. One even imagines the lady scornfully uttering the epithet “miserable worm!”
It is to be hoped that Miss Greenwood received the gentleman in a kindlier spirit.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
British Association for Victorian Studies Postgraduate Pages, hosted by Carys Hudson (Queen's University Belfast) and Hollie Geary-Jones (University of Chester)
Mrs Daffodil Digresses 