A Rose from the May-Queen’s Crown: 1892

 

Queen of the May, Herbert Gustave Schmalz, 1884 https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/queen-of-the-may-90281/view_as/grid/search/keyword:may-queen/page/5

A Rose from the May-Queen’ s Crown.

“Oh dear! oh dear! What can it be he wants? If I could only tell! For he does want it so!” Margery wrung her hands in her impotence. To think she could not help him—not help him, who had been so good, so good to her!

She fell down on her knees at the bedside.

The old face upturned on the pillows could not turn to look at her thus. The restlessness grew in the haggard eyes, that seemed the only thing alive in the poor stricken body bound fast by paralysis.

“Dear Mr. Gregory, if you could only speak one word—could only tell me what to do for you!”

“One thing you must not do, Miss Margery,” said Dick Strafford’s voice, from the other side of the bed; “you must not take your face out of his sight. I can see my uncle grows more troubled when he loses sight of you.”

As she rose to her feet at his bidding, the young man looked full at her with that in his eyes, which showed a quite sufficient appreciation of the old man’s whim.

But Margery was not heeding Dick. All her thoughts were bent on poor Mr. Gregory, lying there these three days, with that hunger in his look—motionless.

“No, not quite!” cried out Margery suddenly, replying to her own thoughts. “See, his poor fingers are moving, moving. Not his hand—only his finger-tips. Oh, do you think life is coming back into them? Oh Dick, shan’t we send and have the doctor here again at once?”

In her earnestness, she did not notice how she had called his name; but Dick glowed with what appeared to her an eager hope; and no doubt was so, though not what she thought.

“Look at him, Miss Margery. If eyes could speak, his seem to me to say he does not want the doctor; he does want you.”

“The poor hand—the dear hand, that has always been doing deeds of kindness. Always,  always!”

With a little inarticulate murmur of tenderness, such as one uses to a child, she put her hand on the now useless one.

More and more his fingers strove to stir under hers. What his lips could not, his eyes tried hard to tell her. So often did they glance from Margery to the small table at the bedside, that Margery touched one by one the things that stood upon it, hoping to come at his meaning.

Not the cooling drink; not the medicine phials—the bit of paper and pencil for jotting down the directions the doctor had given her?

The paper, the pencil?

His look of relief was so instantaneous, that Margery caught at it eagerly.

“Oh, do you think he could write what he wishes, if I could guide his hand?” she asked Dick, who brought her a book to put under the bit of paper on the bed.

Dick brought the book, indeed; but he looked more than doubtful, as once more she knelt down at the bedside, and put her soft hand over the restless withered one.

Yes, she was not mistaken. Slowly, and with difficulty, under her guidance a few straggling, hardly legible words were traced upon the paper:

“Watch-chain key desk will—”

There the pencil fell from the relaxing fingers. For an instant those disconnected words seemed to stare blankly out of the paper with no meaning for the two young heads bent wistfully above them.

Dick tapped his forehead significantly, standing where the old eyes could not see him.

“He’s wandering,” the gesture said plainly enough to Margery.

But the girl shook her head.

“Do you know where his watch and chain were put?” she asked quickly.

They were found presently, in the dressing case where they were laid three days ago, when at the close of her May ball, Margery came up as May Queen in her white dress and rose crown, to say good-night to the invalid giver of the May ball, her father’s old friend, and so-called guardian of the penniless orphan girl. She came up, to find him fallen in the doorway between his two rooms, half hidden by the portière; rigid and motionless in that death-in-life paralysis.

A small gold key on the watch-chain proved the key to the mysterious writing. It unlocked the desk on the writing table in view in the outer room; and as the lid flew up, there was disclosed a half unfolded paper: “Last Will and Testament—”

“That is what he wants,” began Margery, eagerly; then stopped and drew her breath short and hard, as her eyes fell upon a line of figures in the body of the will. $100,000—

“$100,000 to my nephew Richard Stafford; the rest of my property, real and personal, to be divided equally between my nephew Oliver Dean, and Margery—”

Margery read no more. With a hot blush for her inadvertence in reading anything at all, and a dim sense of wonder at the terms of the will—(for was not Oliver Dean considered old Mr. Gregory’s favorite; and was not old Mr. Gregory’s modest fortune generally estimated at somewhere about a hundred thousand?)— the girl lifted the paper from its place.

“It must be this, that your Uncle Gregory wants—” she was beginning.

The words stopped suddenly upon her lips. The color flew into her face that the next instant was strangely pale; for as she lifted the paper, her eyes fell upon something lying under it. A dead rose from the May Queen’ s crown! The May-Queen herself, and Dick Stafford looking over her shoulder into the open desk, knew it at a glance. A whitish-brown, withered Cherokee rose with its glossy green leaves.

Dick Stafford had reason good to recognize it; since he had been at some pains to send for these same hedge row blossoms, from the girl’s old home, for that occasion of the May party.

There it lay now, under the old man’s will, in the locked desk, the key of which had never been out of the old man’s possession until this moment, when he had signified his wish to have the will brought to his bedside.

The keen eyes of the old man were watching both the young people from his pillow. They were not conscious of the scrutiny; they were only conscious each of the tense look in the other’s face.

Then slowly, still not lowering his eyes from Margery, Dick Stafford stretched out his hand for the dead rose and thrust it into his breast pocket. Margery turned cold, shivering, as he did it. How furtively he did it; how guilty he looked, she said to herself with a sinking heart.

No one but Dick and she had had Cherokee roses; and what had Dick been doing at that desk?

That desk; of which he had appeared to be so profoundly ignorant, when together they looked over poor Mr. Gregory’s scrawl.

Meanwhile, Dick was regarding her with a sort of wrathful pity in his troubled eyes. Was the child mad, that she had done this thing? Had women no sense of right and justice in their unselfishness? Those two last ciphers of the 100,000 were squeezed together, as if they had been inserted afterwards. Was the child mad—in her desire to help him, Dick Stafford, to more than a paltry $1,000 left him in the will; had she not scrupled not only to defraud herself, but also Oliver Dean, who had always been considered the old man’s favorite nephew? Had she tampered with the will, leaving her rose there unawares, a silent witness against her?

He thrust it out of sight; breathlessly, not knowing what was possible to do,— only not to betray this child, who could not have known what she was doing!

As for Margery, her brain was reeling with the wild thoughts pressing on her.

Was Dick Stafford mad, that he had done this thing? Was it because he had done this thing, that he would not understand the poor old man’s writing just now? Surely, surely, he could not have added those two cramped, wedged in ciphers, and so enriched himself! It seemed clearly impossible; and yet—and yet—

That, word took Margery’s breath away; with the swift memory of Dick’s tirades against poor young men wooing rich girls, and her secret consciousness that if he had not been poor, and she with expectations from the old man who had been as a father to her, Dick would long ago have spoken. And the dainty, glossy-leaved Cherokee rose she had fastened in his buttonhole, the night of the ball—

Margery turned sharply away, as he thrust it in his breast. With fire in her eyes, but a deathly pallor in her face, she moved back to the bed, the will in her hand. She could not deny the command, the entreaty, in the old man’s eyes. She had laid it, folded close, under his hand. But he would have it unfolded; how could she deny him that, either? She opened it, and held it out to him, slowly, reluctantly; yet she would not meet his eyes as he read it; nor herself read in them the story of Dick Stafford’s sin. She turned aside, and busied herself with arranging the phials on the stand beside the bed.

The click of the door presently startled her into glancing over her shoulder at it. It was Dick leaving the room. As she turned back, the restless fingers were still moving, moving, as though they vainly strove to reach the pencil. The restless eyes met hers again; not to be gainsaid.

Dick had gone; no harm need be done she told her quailing heart. She flung herself down on her knees at the bedside; she put the pencil once more into the helpless fingers, guiding them. Ah, how she watched for the irregular, hardly legible words they formed with so much difficulty! Her breath came fast; there was a mist before her eyes.

“Pair young fools. Will all right. Oliver’s rose.”

Margery laid her hot cheek against the weary hand, from which she drew away the paper, and hurried to the bell, pulling it vehemently again and again.

As the door was opening:

“Send Mr. Dick here—at once, at once, do you hear?” she cried to the servant she supposed answering her summons.

But this was Dick himself; who came hastily forward and took her in his arms, seeing her changing color.

She broke into a tearful laugh.

“‘Pair of young fools—'” she cried: “Pair of young fools!'”—and thrust the penciled paper on him.

“Pair of young fools!” This May day a year later, the words were spoken again; this time by old Mr. Gregory himself.

For after all, he recovered sufficiently to explain how he had had knowledge of Oliver Dean which caused him to alter his will by the addition of the two ciphers to convey the bulk of his fortune to Dick Stafford; who, he knew, would then be sure to marry Margery. It was the shock of that discovery of Oliver’s unworthiness, which was the cause of the paralytic seizure a moment after altering the will; and the old man fallen in the doorway between his two rooms—speechless—had seen Oliver enter, go to the open desk; the rose stolen from Margery, to provoke Dick’s jealous anger, dropping into the desk from his lapel as he lifted the will from its place. Then something had drawn the young man’s eyes to the prostrate figure staring at him; he had flung back the will, letting the spring lock slam to, and fled.

“The will might bide its time,” said Mr. Gregory; meanwhile, he would give his blessing to this pair of fools, upon this their wedding day.

Godey’s Lady’s Book, May 1892

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  The plot might have been cribbed, Mrs Daffodil suggests, raising her eyebrows censoriously, from Mr William Shakespeare’s Othello, save for the murders and suicide in one and the happy ending in the other, of course. “Pair of young fools,” scarcely covers the idiocy of two young persons in love that they can, on such slender “evidence,” assume the worse of the Beloved.

The maddest merriest day of all the glad new year, indeed…

Mrs Daffodil is also thinking hard thoughts about the kindly Mr Gregory who easily could have left the bulk of his fortune to Margery, rather than to a jealous young man who the old gentleman assumes will marry the dear girl, worn out from watching at his bed-side. Why does no author ever write a story in which Dick inherits, then jilts the comparatively-portionless Margery for high life in London?

A similar strain of brutal realism may be found in these previous posts on Tennyson’s “The May Queen” Adapted for Inclement Weather and The Ideal May-Day; The Actual May-Day.

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.

La Fête du Muguet: 1912

A spray of lily of the valley in pearl, nephrite and diamonds, c. 1900, by Faberge. http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21517/lot/93/

[In Paris] the palm of popularity must be given to the lily of the valley—the muguet des bois.

What the forget-me-not is to the German Gretchen, the muguet des bois (the wild lily of the valley) is to the Paris grisette, and thus it has been for untold generations. The first of May is known as the Fête du Muguet, and on that day, not only is it traditional for children to make presents of bunches of wild lilies of the valley to their elder brothers and sisters—the flower seems to be dedicated to youth—but in the streets surrounding the opera-house, where all the big dressmakers are, you will see at luncheon-hour troops of the young girl apprentices wearing bunches of muguet in their simple bodices. The muguet brings luck, and it appeals more than any other flower to the humble little Parisienne’s sense of poetry, this delicate spike with its double row of little milk-white bells, its broad tapering leaf, and its peculiarly evocative scent. No doubt she feels that in a sense it reflects herself. Is not her life just such another ringing of the changes on a chime of little silver bells, whose flash and tinkle last for the brief space of a spring season? She has the same native wildness, and simple unconscious elegance. To start forth on a bright Sunday morning for one of the woods near Paris, and pick muguet, is her ideal of a holiday excursion.

“En cherchant du muguet,
Du muguet dans la clairière;
En cherchant du muguet,
Du muguet d-a-ans l-a-a f-ô-r-e-t!”

[In search of the lily of the valley,

the lily in the clearing,

in search of the lily of the valley,

the lily of the valley in the forest!]

she sings, and on her way back she pets her lilies of the valley as if they were human beings: “Oh, the beautiful muguet, how sweetly it smells!” Elaborate are her plans for disposing of it. One large bouquet will remain in her room for at least a week, reminding her every moment of the delightful day she has spent. A few sprays will be given to the concierge, or janitor, whose good graces are to be cultivated; while the remainder will go to grand maman, who will not fail to be tearfully reminded thereby of her own sylvan excursions in search of muguet in those far-off days when there were hardly any railways, and it was half a day’s journey to the woods at Meudon.

According to the herbalists, the petals of the lily of the valley contain a toxic substance, which, like digitalis, has a directly stimulating effect upon the heart. Perhaps this may account, by some subtle process of sentimental telepathy or suggestion, for the charm which the muguet so potently exercises over the heart of those essentially Parisian little beings, all made up of nerves, gaiety, and emotions, the midinette of the dress-making atelier, and the grisette of the Latin Quarter. The street-cry, “Fleurissez-vous, mesdames: voila le muguet!” (Beflower yourselves, ladies: behold the lily of the valley!), followed by, “Du muguet! Achetez du muguet! Du bon muguet parfume!” (Lilies of the valley! Buy the lilies of the valley! Fine scented lilies of the valley!), is one of the oldest in Paris. The muguet harvest is as much a godsend to the pariahs of the Paris pavement as is the hop-picking in Kent to the submerged tenth of the London East End. The May morning has hardly dawned before a procession of ragged, footsore tramps comes streaming into the city from the neighbouring woods, loaded with muguet. On May Day waggon-loads of muguet arrive by train. The flowers are picked when they are still in the earliest bud, for the little Parisian lady likes to see them open out under her own eyes, and so have the illusion that their lives are linked with hers. In some of the great forests round Paris it is forbidden to pick the muguet on pain of a fine; for the pheasants are laying at this season, and to steal the eggs on the pretence of looking for lilies of the valley is a common trick with the villagers.

 Sensations of Paris, Rowland Strong, 1912: pp. 233-236

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: To-day is May Day and instead of the cliches about May Queens and the famously bad weather of the holiday, Mrs Daffodil thought she would post instead about the French holiday of La Fête du Muguet, the feast of the lily of the valley. This is said to have had its origins with the Valois King Charles IX when he was presented with a bunch of lilies in 1561 as a porte-bonheur. Charmed, he began giving the ladies of the court lilies on 1 May.  Mrs Daffodil suggests that lilies of the valley brought  the King himself scant luck: his reign was marred by the French Wars of Religion and the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

In the language of flowers, lilies of the valley mean love, luck, and the return of happiness. They are a favourite of Royal brides: Queen Victoria, Grace Kelly and Catherine Middleton all carried bouquets of lily of the valley.

Despite its name, the lily of the valley is actually a member of the Asparagaceae family. However, you would not dare to enjoy the flower, blanched, with hollandaise sauce. Lilies of the valley are extraordinarily toxic if ingested. This fact may explain the curious Devonshire superstition that it is unlucky to plant a bed of lilies of the valley; the person doing so is likely to die within the next twelve months.

Mrs Daffodil wishes her readers a very happy and clement May Day.

 

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.

 

A Patch-work May Day Entertainment: 1904

At a May Day entertainment given last year a popular hostess noted the fact that there was repeated controversy among her guests concerning May Day traditions and ancient customs among various nations, which gave her an Idea for this year’s novel May party. She has chosen for her guests all the members of her literary club, and other friends who are fond of literary research and competition. To a certain number she has assigned the task of searching out and describing quaint May Day celebrations whose origins have been lost in the mists of remote antiquity. Others have been requested to describe the customs that have been handed down from our Gothic ancestors. Still others will describe quaint celebrations that have their origin in the Floralia of the Romans. The strange May festivals of the ancient Druids, and the May games which Christianity finally adopted from these, will also be brought up for consideration, with prizes awarded (of course) for the best papers on the various subjects. But the most interesting feature of the entertainment will be the acting out of many curious customs.

As the entertainment will be given on the eve of May Day, the festivities will be continued until the “Meeting of the Dew” may be celebrated in the early hours of May Day morning. When the people of ancient Edinburgh used to assemble at Arthur’s Seat to “meet the dew” May dew was thought to possess all kinds of virtues. Even the English girls went into the field to wash their faces in it at dawn, in order to procure a good complexion. Samuel Pepys records in his delightful diary that his wife has gone to Woolwich for a little change of air “and to gather the May dew.” This form of celebration would have to be omitted when the entertainment is given in a city home, but as our hostess has spacious grounds surrounding her suburban house, the “meeting of the dew” will be a novel feature of the celebration.

Another quaint festivity that can be carried out on the lawn if desired, but which might also be celebrated as a parlor dance for a city home, is the German Walpurglsnacht, and although the witches may not “ride up the Brocken on magpies’ tails,” their weird dance may be celebrated—the witches who dance on the Brocken until they have danced away the winter’s snow.

The “Parade of Sweeps” will be an interesting feature of the entertainment. It is said that the parade of sweeps in bowers of greenery lingered on rather longer in England than May poles. It is supposed to have originated in this way—and this story will be told by one of those to whom the searching for English festivities has been assigned. Edward Wortley Montagu (born about 1714) who later was destined to win celebrity by still stranger freaks, escaped when a boy from Westmont School, and borrowed the cloths of a chimney sweep, in whose trade he became an adept. A long search led to his discovery and restoration to his parents on May 1, in recollection of which event Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu is said to have instituted the May Day feast given by her for many years to the London chimney sweepers. A few of the guests who are humorously inclined will don costumes of the old-time chimney sweeps, and after their mirth-provoking “dance of the sweeps,” will retain the costume while acting the clown during the remainder of the entertainment.

The final celebration before the May Day breakfast—which will be served shortly after midnight, in the earliest hours of May Day morning—will be patterned after a quaint custom in Lorraine, in which jokes on individual guests will play an important part. In Lorraine, girls dressed in white go from village to village stringing off couplets in which the inhabitants are turned into somewhat unmerciful ridicule. The girls of this place enlighten the people of that as to their small failings, and vice versa. The village poets harvest the jokes made by one community at the expense of another, in order to shape them into a consecutive whole for recital on May Day. The girls are rewarded for their part in the business by small coin, cakes and fruit.

Although the idea of reward and of going from village to village for adaptable jokes will not be carried out, this can be made a charming feature of the festivity. To a number of practical jokers has been assigned the task of forming into laughable couplets all the faults and failings or peculiarities of the various guests, and while the unpleasant sting of personality will be avoided, by omitting mention of any particular guest in connection with the various accusations, there will be continual sport In choosing the guest to whom the joke seems most applicable.

Caldecott, Randolph; May Day; Manchester Art Gallery; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/may-day-204629

Several quaint old-time dances will be Introduced during the evening; but as no May Day party can be quite complete without the English dance around the May pole, a flower-decked pole will be a feature of the parlor decorations. And after the final May dance in good old English style about this pole, each guest will receive as a souvenir one of its gay silk streamers and a floral wreath or garland. Phebe Westcott Humphreys.

The Country Gentleman, Volume 69, 1904: p. 378

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil finds the whole thing a contrived, patch-work sort of entertainment. What sane hostess would try to cram academic papers, dew, dancing witches, and the May Pole into a single party?  One might even call it a “crazy quilt.” Witches and May Poles and Sweeps, oh my!

To be Relentlessly Informative, Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, who died in 1800, gave for many years a May-day entertainment to the chimney-sweeps of London at her house in Portman Square. These sooty guests were regaled with roast beef and plum-pudding, and a dance succeeded, while each of them received a shilling on his departure.

Mrs Daffodil has written before on the Ideal and the Real May Day, as well as some other over-elaborate May Day pageants and a parody of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s bumpity-thumpity poem, The May Queen, adapted for inclement weather, as is Britain’s wont on that day.

 

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.

 

How to Celebrate May-Day: 1863, 1912, 1928

The May Queen, W.E. Tucker, 1843

Mrs Daffodil asserts that the proper English May-Day consists of floral displays, dancing rustics, various contests of strength, agility, and alcohol consumption, a good deal of fumbling about in the shrubbery, and, of course, the crowning of the May Queen. (Mrs Daffodil prefers to ignore the co-opting of the holiday by the International Labour Movement.)

Our American cousins , too, took up the flowery garlands of the celebration, adding little touches of their own to the festival. One fears they did not fully appreciate the pagan undertones of characters like “Jack-in-the-Green” or “Robin Hood.”  However, perhaps subliminally, they acknowledged the propriety of using the imagery of a Spring Fertility Festival for a bridal shower. “Perky” May-Pole, indeed….

The Indians call the month of May the “Time of the Flower-Moon.” Just as April is filled with rain showers, May is the month for bride-showers, following the order of the flower-moon preceding the honeymoon for the June bride.

A luncheon shower is a pleasing way of entertaining the bride-to-be. The table can be decorated effectively with a pink and green May pole for a centerpiece, its flower streamers in corresponding colors draped down to different places on the table. At the end of each, folded in pink paper blossoms, are little notes, preferably in verse, directing the bride-to-be to different part of the house (on the mantel, behind the phonograph, and so on), each a hiding place for a dainty gift for the bride—flowered lingerie, smart china, or any gift that carries out the flower motif.

Miniature May poles made of striped candy sticks and ribbons, with the guest’s name written on a flat card to which the stick is fastened, will serve as place cards, and you may have pretty little “May baskets” filled with candy at each cover.

If you are serving your guests at small tables, there may be different centerpieces for each table. “Jack-in-the-green,” a clown, dressed in pink and green, and hidden in a bouquet of flowers, is charmingly reminiscent of old England. The “Lady of the May,” a child’s doll, decorated with flowers, signifies a popular old custom you might work into your scheme of decorating, or, if you are using a long table, you may have the May pole in the exact center. “Jack-in-the-green” at one end and the “Lady of the May” at the other.

Games apropos to the occasion may feature the Robin Hood idea—Robin Hood, you know, always figured prominently in the celebration of the first of May. Tiny bows and arrows and a flower-decorated target will furnish amusement—with a gay May basket, some tiny present hidden beneath its flowers, for a prize. And nothing would be more fun or more appropriate than to crown the bride-to-be “Queen of the May” during your party.

For your bridge game use score cards decorated with spring blossoms, and go to a little extra trouble with your pencil. Wrap it in pink and green strips of paper, hand colored ribbons from it, and stick it in a paper-covered spool for a base, so that it will stand up straight and perky like a May pole when not in use. Seattle [WA] Daily Times 24 April 1928: p. 19

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It really is rather extraordinary how long even bowdlerised and ill-understood versions of the May-Day Festivities survived. Even in the United States, May-Pole dances and parties were a staple of young ladies’ academies and, as we have seen, bridal showers. Rather earlier, there was advice on May-Day Tableaux for the young. Mrs Daffodil gives a single sample so as to not weary her readers.

TABLEAU  I— MAY

Let the furniture be removed from the stage, and the background draped with white, looped with garlands of flowers and leaves; the floor covered with white, and flowers scattered over it. One single figure represents May. A beautiful blonde should be selected. Let her wear pure white; the dress long, full, and floating; her hair should fall free, either in curls or waving ripples, and a wreath of delicate flowers rest on her head; flowers should appear to fall all about her; in her hair and on her dress (small pins, or a few stitches of thread will fasten them); her hands are raised, her eyes uplifted, as if she were just about to rise and soar away. The writer has seen a lovely child so dressed and standing, and the tableau was as beautiful as can be imagined. Godey’s Lady’s Book May 1863

Crowning the May Queen, c. 1905

Mrs Daffodil is not quite sure when the escalation of May-Day Pageants began, but in this account from 1912, the May Queen is accompanied, not only by the traditional English Robin-Hood and Hobby Horse, but a parade-of-all-nations including (inexplicably) Roman maidens and Japanese girls. Each of the national groups had its own suggested dance figure, song or May-Pole braiding pattern. If one was ambitious and had a stock of willing young ladies, one could reconstruct the entire tedious pageant by consulting this detailed book.

A SUCCESSFUL MAY-DAY PAGEANT.

At six o’clock in the evening, just about sundown, the processional pageant of all the players, two and two, carrying their ornamental accessories proceed in their march to the May-pole, heralded by the forester’s bugle horn. There are groups of various national dancers in the characteristic costume of their countries including the little milkmaids with cap, apron, and pail; the Scotch Highlanders with plaid cap and feather; the English shepherdesses with their crooks, looking like a band of veritable Bopeeps; the graceful Roman maidens, with their musical pipes and garlands; some Japanese girls with their parasols, waddling and tiptoeing. Rollicking and wild with glee come Robin Hood and his merry men, for the Morris dances, not forgetting the hobbyhorse with spirited “false trots, smooth ambles and Canterbury paces.” The inimitable jester with his pranks, and the little black-faced chimney-sweeps. The pageant procession approaching the May-pole, the centre of the scene, is led by the May Queen and her retinue, half of the attendants on each side of the queen, partners on opposite sides. Each attendant holds a garland of the canopy in her hands. The Festival Book: May-Day Pastime and The May-Pole Dances, Revels and Musical Games for the Playground, School and College, Jennette Emeline Carpenter Lincoln, 1912

Mrs Daffodil wishes her readers the Maddest Merriest Day Of All the Glad New Year.

See another May-Day post about a May-Queen controversy. And this, about the ideal vs. the actual May Day. And this parody of the all-too-easily-parodied Tennyson’s “The May Queen,” adapted for inclement weather.

 

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.

 

Tennyson’s “The May Queen” Adapted for Inclement Weather: 1877

An ideal May Queen’s bower.

THE MAY QUEEN

New Version, adapted to existing Climatic Conditions

Considering apology superfluous, Mr Punch offers none, as the Poet Laureate will doubtless approve the modifications of his beautiful lines, rendered needful by recent meteorological conditions.

You must wake and call me early, call me early, Mother dear;

To-morrow’ll be the tryingest time of all the Spring, this year—

Of all the Spring, this year, Mother, the dreariest, dreadfullest day ;—

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, Mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

 

There’ll be many a red, red nose, no doubt, but none so red as mine;

For the wind is still in the East, Mother, and makes one peak and pine:

And we ‘re going to have six weeks of it, or so the prophets say—

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, Mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

 

I sleep so sound all night, Mother, I’m sure I shall never wake,

So you’d better call me loud, Mother, and perhaps you’ll have to shake:

I shall want some coffee hot and strong, before I’m called away,

To shiver as Queen o’ the May, Mother, to shiver as Queen o’ the May.

 

As I was coming home to-night whom think you I should see but Doctor Squills!

And he saw that my nose was as red as red could be;

And he said the weather was cruel sharp, that I’d better stay away,—

But I’m chosen Queen o’ the May, Mother, so I must be Queen o’ the May.

 

The honeysuckle round the porch is white with sleety showers,

And, though they call it the month of May, the hawthorn has no flowers;

And the ice in patches may yet be found in swamps and hollows gray,—

Ain’t it nice for the Queen o’ the May, Mother, so nice for the Queen o’ the May?

 

The East wind blows and blows, Mother, on my nose I follow suit,

For my influenza’s so very bad, and I’ve got a cough to boot;

Perhaps it will rain and sleet, Mother, the whole of the livelong day,

Yet I’m to be Queen o’ the May, Mother; I must be Queen o’ the May

 

I’ve not the slightest doubt, Mother, I shall come home very ill,

And then there’ll be bed for a week or more, and a long, long doctor’s bill;

And with prices up and wages down however will father pay?

But I’m to be Queen o’ the May, Mother—oh, bother the Queen o’ the May!

 

So please wake and call me early, call me early, Mother dear,

That I may look out some winter wraps, fit for the spring this year.

To-morrow of this bitter “snap” I’m sure’ll be the bitterest day,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, Mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

Punch 12 May 1877

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: This parody is based on the old chestnut, “The May Queen,” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, which was quoted in the press and recited ad nauseam in drawing-rooms until one wanted to scream. The anonymous Punch contributor has captured perfectly the thumpety-bumpety scansion of the original, which ill-accords with the lingering death-bed and morally uplifting sentiments found in the last two sections of the poem.

It was something of a joke that May-day weather in England was always inclement. In 1876 and 1877, records show that the day was either snowy or very wet. Mrs Daffodil has previously posted an amusing cartoon sequence on the Ideal vs. the Actual May-Day, dating from 1878, when the weather continued perfectly foul. Mrs Daffodil notes that the forecast for May-day is anything but sunny. She wishes all of her readers the happiest of times on this, the maddest, merriest day.

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.

 

Absolutely Nothing but the Chiffon: Rhythmic Dance: 1915

Friday last was May-Day, a time for crowning the May Queen, rejoicing in the beauties of nature, and doing spring-dances on the newly-green grass. To prepare us for these dances, let us hear from a fervent exponent of the “Rhythmic Dance,” Mrs Florence Fleming Noyes:

“When we cultivate the sympathetic nervous system through the right use of rhythmic movement we will be capable of great things in creative art since all the beauty which we feel and to which we respond registers on the brain….But the people of the upper classes need this art just as much, if not more than the working people. The so-called vulgar person is considered too free in his body movements and to be unlike him, the people of the higher strata of society go to the other extreme. Culture and extreme nicety have come to mean mincing steps and nervous, jerky gestures. The elite of society seem to think it bad form to move anything other than the extremities. Ultra-refined, every movement is restricted—every muscle kept in rigid tension. When you clench your hand, you clench your spine, if you but knew it. And corsets—they not only confine a woman’s figure—they cramp her very soul.” Oregonian [Portland, OR] 27 July 1913: p. 12

Mrs Noyes in a Scarf Dance, Library of Congress images

Mrs Noyes was one of America’s leading exponents of the “barefoot dance,” and set up studios and camps to train girls in this semi-clad art. It was said of her that she “out-Isadora’d Isadora Duncan.”

LIGHTLY DRAPED, GIRL GODDESSES DANCE ON GREEN

Forty Chiffon-Trimmed Maidens Put on Classic Steps Out of Doors.

FARM RENTED FOR THEM

Rural Residents Nest in Trees and Peep Through Brush at Unusual Scenes.

New York. Forty of the most fair and most figuresome—if there is such a word—young women that the town ever beheld will invade one of New York’s most fashionable residence sections Friday.

Better looking than a beauty show, more graceful than the best trained ballet you ever saw, and all—or nearly all—society girls!

No, this is not a theatrical announcement. It is merely the news that Mrs. Florence Fleming Noyes, instructor in poise and “lyro-rhythmic expression,” is transferring to No. 220 Madison avenue for the winter a school which in the summer she has been conducting at South Woodstock, Conn., and is bringing her pupils with her.

No. 220 Madison avenue is the old home of Robert Ingersoll, and is directly across the street from the house of J. Pierpont Morgan. The forty beautiful girls will dwell there as well as study there.

And they will wear—though not in the open air, as they did at South Woodstock—filmy costumes of chiffon. There will be neither sufficiency nor weight of fabric to encumber them in their lissom movements.

SIGHS OF REGRET AND RELIEF.

Just how South Woodstock, which has had the young pupils of Mrs. Noyes all summer, feels about their departure is difficult to ascertain. But it is probably a mixed feeling, with the feminine part of the countryside heaving sighs of relief, and the masculine end closing its eyes and trying to call back the wonderful visions it beheld through the warm, sunlit days. At least that is the occasional feeling of a reporter who saw the dances of the sprites.

At the beginning of July, Mrs. Noyes rented the 220-acre farm of Judge Alfred Matthewson of New Haven, a beautiful place which contains velvety lawns, rippling brooks, secluded woodland glades and all the other things necessary to call to the mind of a young woman what might be termed “thoughts beautiful.” Mrs. Noyes is the dancer who impersonated “Liberty” on the capitols steps at the inauguration of President Wilson. She has appeared at various pageants given by suffragists. Rodin, the sculptor, said she had the most perfect right arm in the world, her friends say.

To the remote Connecticut farm came her pupils from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland and half a dozen other cities. They were to learn grace, poise and “lyro-rhythmic expression.” Some of them brought ten or twelve trunks of clothing with them, but as soon as they arrived they learned that the most imperative order of Mrs. Noyes was that the girls were to wear loose robes of the lightest of chiffon; only that, nothing more. No shoes, no corsets, absolutely nothing but the chiffon.

SPECTATORS BROKE STOCKADE.

At first the dancing lessons were given on a smooth stretch of turf not far from the road which leads to Pomfret, where the Woodstock valley farmers go to send their produce to market. But it was not long before Mrs. Noyes found that farmers’ wagons and automobiles were blocking the roadway, and that every dance was beheld by an assemblance of spectators, ranging from millionaires to hired men. So she had her own hired man, Gus Erickson, cut 300 white birch saplings and make a stockade of them, which shut off the view.

But enthusiastic spectators pried and cut apart the birches, and thronged the roadside in greater numbers than ever. And so—alas for the general populace!—Mrs. Noyes changed the scene of the terpsichorean endeavors to a secluded glade away back in the woods, far from any road.

Every morning and afternoon the girls danced and sought to give rhythmic expression to their thoughts. Each was told, upon her arrival, that she must forget her family and name, and assume the character of some mythological person.

PEEPED AT GODDESSES BATHING

Following the afternoon dances, the girls would go to a brook where there was a little waterfall and, still in their chiffons, would lie in the stream and allow the tumbling waters to fall over them.

But admirers of the classic and beautiful sought them out, the girls and Mrs. Noyes discovered, even in these retreats so far from the beaten paths. Behind bushes and up in tree tops were discovered the faces of farm lads and (this is amply vouched for) even gray topped and gray whiskered visages of grown-up agriculturalists.

And to the home of the forty fair ones came reports that many an irate employer wondered why in all tarnation his produce didn’t get to New York in time, and, learning, went down and sought a vision for himself. And there were also tales of amply-informed farmers’ wives going to the old Matthewson place and dragging away their beauty worshipping spouses.

Eventually the guardian of the forty had a high barbed wire fence placed about their dancing turf and about their bathing brook, which more or less effectually kept away the ardent devotees of “lyro-rhythmic expression” as a scenic affair.

THERE WAS A “GHOST” TOO.

The Matthewson farmhouse is a great, rambling structure containing forty rooms. But these young mythological queens scored to sleep beneath a roof. Army tents were procured for them, and they spent their dreaming hours in the open, too. Two of the girls one night fancied they saw some one peeing beneath the cover of their tent, but decided that it must have been a ghost. In some fashion this apparition was named Alfred the Ghost,” and it was one of the jokes of the aesthetic colony to ask each morning if any one had seen “Alfred” during the night.

At the beginning of this month, when the days and night began to grow coolish, Mrs. Noyes closed her school and most of the girls went home. They had some amusing experiences. Their shoes would not fit because going barefoot had changed the shape of their feet. Garments were too loose, because figures had grown more slender. Altogether they were quite different girls.

Their departure was a great event for South Woodstock—as their arrival had been, too. It was, as has been said, and occasion of mingled regret and relief. If you know anybody who lives up South Woodstock way, ask him, and he’ll probably sigh ecstatically, but at the same time sorrowfully.

Idaho Statesman [Boise, ID] 1 October 1915: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: While Mrs Daffodil finds the peeping farmers to be most reprehensible, she also looks askance at the barefoot proponents of the terpsichorean art. Several years ago her Ladyship offered the use of the Hall grounds for a May-Day charity fête. The Hon. Cynthia Twerkington volunteered to stage a performance of rhythmic dance, recruiting young persons from around the county to remove their underthings and don diaphanous tunics to frolic on the greensward. When the Mothers’ Union objected, the Hon. Cynthia grudgingly conceded camiknickers. She dubbed her troupe, “The Twerkington Souls.”

The day of the fête dawned hot and overcast, with thunder muttering in the distance. Several dancers’ mothers, citing fears of lightning, withdrew their charges. Despite this, the Souls, considerably reduced in number, began their first dance, which was entitled, “The Awakening.” Precisely what was being awakened was not made plain. The “dance” seemed to consist of creepings,  slitherings, and a variety of feverish embraces modeled after poses plastiques. Mrs Daffodil saw his Lordship turn a brilliant mauve, while the ladies in the audience began to fan themselves vigorously. Mrs Daffodil has limited experience with such things, but one of the under-gardeners, who had seen service in the far east, assured her that he had witnessed similar presentations in Singapore. The Vicar was overheard saying that the dancers were more like chiffon-clad reptiles than anything human and that he would have much to say on the subject in his next Sunday’s sermon.

The performance, perhaps by a merciful providence, came to a premature end when the Hon. Cynthia , who was dodging about a tree, dislodged a low-hanging wasp nest with an aesthetic wave of the hand. The wasps, a species noted for their indifference to the arts, immediately retaliated. She ran, screaming, for the lake, plunged in, and was nearly drowned before the wasps dispersed. She was hauled out by two footmen and hastily wrapped in a tablecloth–the diaphanous draperies proving even more revealing wet than dry. The doctor, who attended the rapidly swelling lady, later remarked that he hadn’t seen anything like it since an outbreak of plague in Poona in ’97.

The Souls were disbanded to the accompaniment of some very strong remarks from the Vicar. The Hon. Cynthia, after a long and tedious course of medical treatment, has taken up bridge, which, if less artistic, offers far less scope for wasps.

Mrs Daffodil’s readers may be gratified to learn that it is still possible to attend a dance camp inspired by Mrs Noyes.

Noyes dancers, 1915

The Ideal May-Day; The Actual May-Day: 1878

Godey’s Lady’s Book, May, 1878

How to Celebrate May-Day: 1863, 1912, 1928

The May Queen, W.E. Tucker, 1843

Mrs Daffodil asserts that the proper English May-Day consists of floral displays, dancing rustics, various contests of strength, agility, and alcohol consumption, a good deal of fumbling about in the shrubbery, and, of course, the crowning of the May Queen. (Mrs Daffodil prefers to ignore the co-opting of the holiday by the International Labour Movement.)

Our American cousins , too, took up the flowery garlands of the celebration, adding little touches of their own to the festival. One fears they did not fully appreciate the pagan undertones of characters like “Jack-in-the-Green” or “Robin Hood.”  However, perhaps subliminally, they acknowledged the propriety of using the imagery of a Spring Fertility Festival for a bridal shower. “Perky” May-Pole, indeed….

The Indians call the month of May the “Time of the Flower-Moon.” Just as April is filled with rain showers, May is the month for bride-showers, following the order of the flower-moon preceding the honeymoon for the June bride.

A luncheon shower is a pleasing way of entertaining the bride-to-be. The table can be decorated effectively with a pink and green May pole for a centerpiece, its flower streamers in corresponding colors draped down to different places on the table. At the end of each, folded in pink paper blossoms, are little notes, preferably in verse, directing the bride-to-be to different part of the house (on the mantel, behind the phonograph, and so on), each a hiding place for a dainty gift for the bride—flowered lingerie, smart china, or any gift that carries out the flower motif.

Miniature May poles made of striped candy sticks and ribbons, with the guest’s name written on a flat card to which the stick is fastened, will serve as place cards, and you may have pretty little “May baskets” filled with candy at each cover.

If you are serving your guests at small tables, there may be different centerpieces for each table. “Jack-in-the-green,” a clown, dressed in pink and green, and hidden in a bouquet of flowers, is charmingly reminiscent of old England. The “Lady of the May,” a child’s doll, decorated with flowers, signifies a popular old custom you might work into your scheme of decorating, or, if you are using a long table, you may have the May pole in the exact center. “Jack-in-the-green” at one end and the “Lady of the May” at the other.

Games apropos to the occasion may feature the Robin Hood idea—Robin Hood, you know, always figured prominently in the celebration of the first of May. Tiny bows and arrows and a flower-decorated target will furnish amusement—with a gay May basket, some tiny present hidden beneath its flowers, for a prize. And nothing would be more fun or more appropriate than to crown the bride-to-be “Queen of the May” during your party.

For your bridge game use score cards decorated with spring blossoms, and go to a little extra trouble with your pencil. Wrap it in pink and green strips of paper, hand colored ribbons from it, and stick it in a paper-covered spool for a base, so that it will stand up straight and perky like a May pole when not in use. Seattle [WA] Daily Times 24 April 1928: p. 19

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It really is rather extraordinary how long even bowdlerised and ill-understood versions of the May-Day Festivities survived. Even in the United States, May-Pole dances and parties were a staple of young ladies’ academies and, as we have seen, bridal showers. Rather earlier, there was advice on May-Day Tableaux for the young. Mrs Daffodil gives a single sample so as to not weary her readers.

TABLEAU  I— MAY

Let the furniture be removed from the stage, and the background draped with white, looped with garlands of flowers and leaves; the floor covered with white, and flowers scattered over it. One single figure represents May. A beautiful blonde should be selected. Let her wear pure white; the dress long, full, and floating; her hair should fall free, either in curls or waving ripples, and a wreath of delicate flowers rest on her head; flowers should appear to fall all about her; in her hair and on her dress (small pins, or a few stitches of thread will fasten them); her hands are raised, her eyes uplifted, as if she were just about to rise and soar away. The writer has seen a lovely child so dressed and standing, and the tableau was as beautiful as can be imagined. Godey’s Lady’s Book May 1863

Crowning the May Queen, c. 1905

Mrs Daffodil is not quite sure when the escalation of May-Day Pageants began, but in this account from 1912, the May Queen is accompanied, not only by the traditional English Robin-Hood and Hobby Horse, but a parade-of-all-nations including (inexplicably) Roman maidens and Japanese girls. Each of the national groups had its own suggested dance figure, song or May-Pole braiding pattern. If one was ambitious and had a stock of willing young ladies, one could reconstruct the entire tedious pageant by consulting this detailed book.

A SUCCESSFUL MAY-DAY PAGEANT.

At six o’clock in the evening, just about sundown, the processional pageant of all the players, two and two, carrying their ornamental accessories proceed in their march to the May-pole, heralded by the forester’s bugle horn. There are groups of various national dancers in the characteristic costume of their countries including the little milkmaids with cap, apron, and pail; the Scotch Highlanders with plaid cap and feather; the English shepherdesses with their crooks, looking like a band of veritable Bopeeps; the graceful Roman maidens, with their musical pipes and garlands; some Japanese girls with their parasols, waddling and tiptoeing. Rollicking and wild with glee come Robin Hood and his merry men, for the Morris dances, not forgetting the hobbyhorse with spirited “false trots, smooth ambles and Canterbury paces.” The inimitable jester with his pranks, and the little black-faced chimney-sweeps. The pageant procession approaching the May-pole, the centre of the scene, is led by the May Queen and her retinue, half of the attendants on each side of the queen, partners on opposite sides. Each attendant holds a garland of the canopy in her hands. The Festival Book: May-Day Pastime and The May-Pole Dances, Revels and Musical Games for the Playground, School and College, Jennette Emeline Carpenter Lincoln, 1912

Mrs Daffodil wishes her readers the Maddest Merriest Day Of All the Glad New Year.

See last year’s May-Day post about a May-Queen controversy. And this, about the ideal vs. the actual May Day.

 

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 Difficulty about a May Queen Election: 1839

SOMETHING FUNNY. On Tuesday last, the young ladies of the schools held their annual May Festival, and elected a May Queen, according to custom. The young lady having the majority of votes was born in England, of English parents now settled in this country. Most of the other girls at once rebelled, saying they would not be governed by a British queen. The queen elect, either afraid to rule such turbulent subjects, or resenting this affront to her nationality, or what is more probably, from an amiable desire to prevent difficulties or unpleasant feelings, informed her teacher that she declined wearing an American crown. Writs for a new election were issued, and the majority of votes given for an American girl named English. Harmony was then restored, and these little republican monarchists, having, in the old spirit of Anglo Saxon blood, fixed their crown to suit themselves, not the wearer, returned to their allegiance and their frolic. We see something prophetic in this. It proves that a crown could not fall to the lot of any thing decidedly American, but must devolve upon something English. This shows a natural repulsion between royalty and everything American, which indicates an eternal duration to our republic! [Philadelphia World.]

Saturday Morning Transcript [Boston, MA] 8 June 1839: p. 164

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil is a bit fogged as to why the English girl won the contest if so many were in opposition to a British Queen. And the wit in the final lines is somewhat obscure. Nevertheless, as this is, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson says, “the maddest merriest day” of all the year, Mrs Daffodil wishes you all a very happy May Day.