Tag Archives: Edwardian courtship

“Will you be my summer girl?”: 1909

The Jaunty Summer Girl

A SUMMER GIRL

“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.

Halloween Charms: 1903

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A young woman tosses an apple peel over her shoulder to divine the initial of her future husband.

Halloween Charms

Young men, who wish to decide their fate on Halloween should dress in their best, walk to the candy store about 7 p.m., purchase a box of the most expensive dainties, and go to the home of some girl. Be sure that you select the home of the one you imagine to be the bright particular star of them all. After asking for her, put your hat and stick within convenient reach, assume a pleasant smile, and when she appears give her the candy. Along with this say as many sweet things as come into your head. Then repeat slowly but distinctly these words: “Will you marry me?” If she answers “Yes” your fate is fixed.

A quaint old custom for girls who wish to peer into the future is to walk down the cellar stairs backward at midnight, holding a candle in the hand and peer into a mirror. There the face of the future husband possibly will be seen. An improvement upon this custom is for the girl to walk into the kitchen and secure a juicy apple pie. Return to the parlor, holding the pie carefully before you. Take a knife and cut it into quarters. Put one quarter on a plate, pour over it some rich cream, lay a spoon beside the pie and hand it to the young man, saying at the same time: “I made this pie myself.” This beats the cellar stairs and mirror experiment about ten miles. It is a certain augur of the future.

Throwing an apple peeling over the shoulder is another odd old custom for Halloween observance. The peeling is supposed to curl into a letter representing the initial of the future husband’s name. A better test than this is to let the young man see you idly scribbling. You write your first name and then his last name. Thus, if your first name is Lucille and his last name is Miggleberry, you would write “Lucille Miggleberry.” Naturally, he will want to see what you have written. Then you must blush and seem confused and try to tear of the paper. DO NOT TEAR IT UP. After due reluctance, let him see what you have written, coyly explaining that you just wondered how the names would look together.

Burning a paper on which is written the name of the adored one is also a favorite charm for Halloween. This is popularly supposed to bring him to his senses. A much surer plan, and a more sociable one, is to invite him to spend the evening, and also to ask another man—a handsome man who is tolerably smitten with you himself. Contrive to send the second man home earlier than the adored one. This is said to work well indeed.

Omaha [NE] Daily Bee 30 October 1904: p. 33

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Other Hallowe’en customs included hiding a dime, a ring and a thimble in a cake or a dish of mashed potatoes. The person finding the ring will soon be married. The one who gets the thimble will be a spinster. And the finder of the dime will never lack for money. Mrs Daffodil suspects that there was often some sleight-of-hand involved in cutting the cake or dishing the potatoes. There were still other rituals involving mirrors at midnight and various rhyming charms at windows.

Mrs Daffodil is puzzled as to how a religious feast celebrating the dead emerging from their graves to wander the earth became a festival of divinatory practices to identify one’s future spouse. One supposes it is a manifestation of that vulgar expression, “sex and death,” so amply represented in these latter days by the many “naughty nurse” Hallowe’en costumes.

Mrs Daffodil has written of other, darker Hallowe’en superstitions and of Queen Victoria’s celebration of Hallowe’en at Balmoral.

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

384,000 Squeezes: The Evidence in the Breach-of-Promise Case: 1901

Mr Binks’s Safety Hammock: 1909

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The Hammock Tissot

SAFETY HAMMOCK

MR. BINKS FOUND INVENTION SUCCESS.

But He Will Improve It When He Gets Well, At His Daughter’s Request.

Ellis Parker Butler.

Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” etc.

Randolph Binks of Betzville , is passionately fond of reclining in a hammock, but up to the present he has never reclined in one to any great extent. Mr. Binks is an excellent citizen, but is more rotund than any other man in this county, and when he reclines in a hammock so much of him rotunds upward that it overthrows the equilibrium, and the hammock quickly but gracefully turns over and drops Mr. Binks on the ground with a thud. Any man less passionately fond of reclining in a hammock would have given it up long ago, but Mr. Binks said in our hearing that he would be blamed if he would let any hammock in creation get the best of him. He says he has gently climbed into the hammock over 8,902 times, put his head back carefully, grasped the edges, and that each and every time the hammock has revolved half a revolution suddenly, and spilled him on the hard, hard ground. He says that at about the eight thousand nine hundred and third time he decided that be had been attacking the hammock too gently, and that it must be taken roughly, like the nettle, to be handled properly, so he stood back and made a leap, landing in the hammock. This was almost successful, except that the hammock acted like a springboard and, taking Mr. Binks, threw him six feet against the fence, head first, breaking three pickets. In his temporary anger Mr. Binks arose and kicked the hammock, which then grabbed him by the foot, yanked his other foot off the ground, and bumped him down on the back of his head.

When he became calm Mr. Binks went as far away from the hammock as he could get and sat down on the ground and studied it, and he came to the conclusion that what the hammock needed was a counter-weight. If there was a greater weight attached to the underneath of the hammock when Mr. Binks got into it, it could not turn over. He said he wondered that no one had ever before thought of putting a keel on a hammock, and he immediately began looking about for a good, heavy weight. The best thing he could find was an old millstone, and he built up a solid wall of loose brick underneath the hammock. On top of this he laid the millstone, and then he pressed the hammock smoothly against the millstone, and, warming two quarts of glue, he poured it into the hammock and went away to allow the glue to harden in peace.

That evening Adelia, Mr. Binks’s daughter, and her fiancé, young Wilfred Doppelgang, went quietly into the back yard to sit in the hammock and spoon. They sat.

About three hours later Adelia raised her head from Wilfred’s shoulder and said, “It don’t seem like you hug as hard as you used to. Wilfred!” She said this in a reproachful tone of voice, implying that perhaps Wilfred did not love her as of yore and Wilfred, who did love her as of yore, tried to take his arm from about her waist, and get a new strangle hold, but, alas! he could not! He could not get his arm loose for that hug. In the course of three hours the glue had hardened and the hug had become a permanent, guaranteed fast embrace. He had undoubtedly allowed his sleeve to repose a moment or more in the glue, and Wilfred’s sleeve and the back gores of Adelia’s shirt waist had become one and inseparable. This is desirable in a union of states, but it is not recommended for all purposes.

With consternation Wilfred then started to leave the hammock. So did Adelia. Instantly, without a moment’s hesitation, they did not leave. Reader, have you ever been glued to a large, round, sandy complected millstone? Have you ever seated yourself upon a millstone well buttered with glue, with the girl of your choice beside you, and then sat there until the glue hardened and you became, as you might say, two souls with but a single thought? Wilfred and Adelia could not arise; they could not even sidestep. They were glued to the millstone, and the millstone was glued to the hammock, and the hammock was tied to two large trees, and the roots of the trees extended many, many feet into the soil. There was but one thing to do.

Cautiously leaning forward, Adelia and Wilfred began to remove the loose pile of brick from beneath the millstone, until all the bricks were gone. Then, wrapped arm in arm, they began to joggle the hammock. It was a trying moment. Suddenly, as out of a clear sky, there was a sound of ripping, breaking, tearing, and then a thud. The millstone had fallen to earth, taking with it the central portion of the hammock. This left a large hole in the hammock. It also took with it— Pardon me, I should say it also left a large___ At any rate Wilfred and Adelia sped hastily toward the house.

Half an hour later Mr. Randolph Binks strolled home, and all was silence. As has been said, he is passionately fond of reclining in a hammock. He has since remarked to Uncle Ashdod Glute that his invention of a non-tipping hammock was a success.

Formerly, when he entered a hammock one thing always happened — the hammock reversed itself and threw him out. But now Randolph Binks walked up to his hammock and threw himself into it with confidence.

The hammock did not, Mr. Binks says, throw him out. Mr. Binks merely walked up to the hammock in the dark and threw himself into it. Mr. Binks says that in passing through the hole that had been torn in the hammock he thought very few things worthy of reproduction by the press. He says he merely passed through in a simple, unconventional way and met the millstone quite informally, saluting it with the back of his head. He says it was a mere love tap—for the millstone.

Mr. Binks claims that his hammock was a success on three counts: First—The hammock did not turn over and drop Mr. Binks on the ground with a thud; he fell through. Second–The hammock did not drop him on the ground with a thud; he hit the millstone. Third—The hammock did not drop him with a thud: the noise was clean and sharp, like the iron rim of the millstone. Mr. Binks says he can think of only one improvement. Hereafter when he wishes to glue anything under a hammock he will choose a feather bed rather than a millstone.

(Copyright. 1909. by W.G. Chapman.)

New York [NY] Daily Tribune, 24 October 1909: p. 8

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Hammocks, as we have seen, can be instruments of seduction, although in this case, the attractive qualities of the object were entirely the result of two quarts of well-warmed glue. While we can but admire Mr Binks’s “make-lemonade” spirit about the success of his invention, we urge him not to quit his usual day-time employment.

The malign disposition of the hammock was well-known, as this poem celebrates:

THE INIQUITY OF THE HAMMOCK.

Josh Wink, in Baltimore American.

Consider now the hammock, how it lurketh like a snare.

To grab the unsuspecting man and throw him in the air.

Yea, verily, the hammock hath a look of innocence, but it may take the strongest man and throw him to the fence.

The hammock hangeth to the trees with meek and humble look,

And tempteth foolish man until he cometh with a book.

And climbeth in and stretched out and openeth the page,

And then the wicked hammock getteth up its fiercest rage.

It turneth like a serpent, and it taketh such a clutch

Upon the feeble victim that he gaspeth very much.

It whirleth him about the air and swingeth him around, and when he opens his eyes again he’s slammed upon the ground.

O, surely, surely, this is so, yet over him the while

The hammock swayeth quietly and seemeth then to smile.

But yet again the man doth get within the hammock there, and thinketh he will read the book and banish all dull care.

And then again the hammock jumps before a page he’s read,

And ere he knoweth what is up he standeth on his head.

Yea, verily, and then again a hammock in the shade

Will cunningly exert itself and lure a foolish maid

To seek to rest within its folds, and when she sitteth in

The hammock, it will almost seem to wear a happy grin.

It seizeth on the maiden fair and chuckleth at her shriek;

She spraineth both her dainty wrists and moaneth “O, alas!”

And findeth that her hammock sways with truly pleasant gall,

And seemth to inquire of her “good sakes! Did some one fall?”

O, yes, my son, and on a time, when Cupid holds his sway,

And some enamored youth comes round to learn the happy day,

‘Tis then the hammock taketh them and in the air doth hump,

And giveth both their foolish heads a most terrific bump.

And slingeth them about the place until it getteth tired.

And when it wearieth at last across the yard they’re fired;

The man descendeth in a heap upon the garden walk;

The maid hath hairpins in her eyes and is too mad to talk;

And then the wicked hammock waits in most unholy glee

To hear the racket that it knows is very sure to be;

For when the maid regains her breath she riseth to her feet,

And voweth that the man himself is full of all deceit,

And that he pulled it down himself ad that she never more

Will see his face, and wisheth that he’d gone an hour before,

And that she’ll never, never, be his bonnie blushing bride,

And so he getteth to his feet and far away doth ride.

My son, beware the hammock when it swings itself aright.

For it can make the proudest man a truly humble sight.

The Ottawa Journal [Ontario Canada] 29 August 1901: p. 4