Week-end Compendium: 13 January 2016 Valentine Edition

Cupid triumphant, c. 1770-90. Perhaps painted for a lady’s boudoir. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/189538?rpp=30&pg=3&ao=on&ft=cupid&deptids=12&pos=69

Mrs Daffodil has noticed the fluttering in the dove-cote that is the Servants’ Hall over the upcoming Valentine’s holiday. Mrs Daffodil does her best, but managing a mixed-sex staff is sometimes like directing a Feydeau farce translated into Mandarin.  Here are the somewhat distracted posts for this week:

Hints for the Photographer shares tips on looking one’s best in front of a camera including the colours that photograph as dark or light and how to achieve the desired facial expression. “Say ‘bosom!'” says the photographer.

A Stolen or Stray’d Heart at Vaux-Hall is a rare look at a so-called “missed connections” personal want-advertisement from 1738.

That grave person over at Haunted Ohio contributed some occupational valentine verses in Hearse Verses: Valentines for Undertakers

On Valentine’s Day, Mrs Daffodil will share a heart-warming piece of Victorian Valentine’s Day fiction. Happy endings are guaranteed.

A late 18th-century buckle: a cameo showing “the education of Cupid” framed in pastes http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19760/lot/230

Over at the Haunted Ohio blog, in honour of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Monkey, a post featuring a Cornish road-demon and monkey ghosts in Aping the Devil.

And for the anniversary of the first appearance of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette, a post on the giant angel a psychic saw drifting over Lourdes.

Bonus holiday post: The Medium’s Valentine, should one be in love with one who talks with the dead.

From the Archives:  Speaking of vile valentines, the “vinegar valentine” roused some recipients to violence in The St. Valentines’ Day Massacres.

Favorite recent posts:

Posthumous portraiture: Is it live or is it a memorial?

The sad lives of some of the First Children.

That unlucky fellow who married not one, but two women accused of witchcraft. Or were witches just his type?

The best quotes about gin, AKA “Mother’s Ruin.”

Cover art, Richardson’s New Fashionable Lady’s Valentine Writer or Cupid’s Festival of Love, 1830

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.

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead.

 

Hearse Verses: Valentines for Undertakers: 19th century

Books of valentine sentiments were quite popular in the nineteenth century; one could find saccharine stanzas to pass off as one’s own poesy or vile verses for a vinegar valentine. A peculiar feature of these collections were the “occupational” verses to woo the practitioners of various trades—such as the undertaker….

Valentine

To an Undertaker

I am a mantua-maker,

You are an undertaker

Whom much I do regard

Because you are a grave one,

And I’m sure won’t leave one

‘Til laid in the churchyard.

Miami [FL] Herald 13 February 1927: p. 4 [reported in 1927, but from a Victorian valentine.]

 

From an Undertaker to his Valentine.

Be to thine Undertaker kind,

And have him always in your mind;

Hid undertakings are profound,

And plumes have rendered him renown’d.

The Trades People’s Valentine Writer: Consisting of Appropriate Valentines Entirely Original, For People of all Trades or Professions, Alphabetically Arranged, 1830

 

TO AN UNDERTAKER.

To mournful strains I tune my lute,

Because to me the subject’s grave,

Too long ador’d thee, love, I have,

I can no longer be a mute.

 

If towards the ocean of my love

Rolleth thy fond Affection’s billow,

Send me a sprig of weeping willow,

Or cypress-wreath, thy truth to prove.

 

Reject me—and my fate is this:

Off life the fragile twig I hop,

And off, instanter, neck and crop,

I go to the neck-crop-olis!

 

In the serenest of snug corners,

I prithee, love, inter me then—

Plain walking funeral—(two-pound ten)

With return tickets for the mourners.

 

To Kensal Green I most incline—

There spend a half-a-crown a year,

In keeping turf’d the early bier

Of thy departed Valentine.

A collection of new and original valentines, 1858, pp. 104-5

 

“Let Chloe smile upon her lover,

Who will ne’er forsake her;

Each day new charms she will discover,

In her faithful undertaker.”

Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 8 February 1969: p. 65 [reported in 1969, but Victorian in date.]

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil must apologise. She made the mistake of commissioning that grave person over at Haunted Ohio to undertake a compilation of “occupational” Valentine verses.  Mrs Daffodil might have known that the author of a book on the lore of Victorian death and mourning would veer into “vinegar valentines” with a mortuary flavour.

Mrs Daffodil has written before on such seductive stanzas and, while the poesy might be tortuously rhymed, at least the principals were upright tradesmen such as wheelwrights and corset makers. Mrs Daffodil hopes that this will not spoil her readers’ Valentine’s Day and, in fact, may prove useful if one is being courted by or courting an undertaker. She will try to post something in a more romantic vein on the 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 Lady Undertaker: 1912

 

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=87791203&PIpi=120206539

 WOMAN HANGS SIGN AS AN UNDERTAKER

Miss Eleanor Girodat Opens St. Francis’ Mortuary on Bridge Street.

FIRST ONE IN ENTIRE STATE

She Quotes Bible as Answer to Questions About Her Strange Profession

In the person of Miss Eleanor Girodat, 736 Bridge street, Grand Rapids has the distinction of having, in so far as is known, the only woman undertaker in the state of Michigan. There are many women engaged in various branches of mortuary work. Many of them hold embalmer’s licenses from the state board of health, but it remained for Miss Girodat to attain the unique distinction of opening a business of her own to care for the bodies of dead women and children.

“St. Francis’ Mortuary,” is the name carried on the sign above the door of the modest yet cleanly and even cheery establishment recently opened by Miss Girodat. Upon entering one is greeted with a smile from a cheery little woman, quite the reverse of the type usually associated with the so-called grewsome business in which she is engaged.

“Many people have asked me why I do it,” said Miss Girodat. “For my own part, I see nothing strange or unusual in a woman entering this business. I have read in my bible of how after the crucifixion of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus came and took the body from the tree. The story states that Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and ‘that other Mary’ brought spices for the preparation of the body for burial. So, you see, it was an ancient custom to have the women prepare the bodies of their own loved ones for burial, the last earthly office.

“There is another side to the question, too. Not many people would care to have a man nurse their women and children during sickness. After death, it seems, it is another matter. Many people I am sure would rather have a woman care for their dead.”

Miss Girodat has had several years of experience in her work. She is a graduate of the Barnes School of Anatomy, Sanitary Science and Embalming of Chicago, having received her diploma from that institution in June, 1906. Immediately after graduation she took the state examination and received her license as an embalmer.

She worked for some years as an employe of various Grand Rapids undertakers, but decided to enter into business for herself. She has arranged to have two women assistants.   A man will be employed, however, to attend to the public end of the work, such as conducting funeral services at the houses and at churches, as the case may be.

Grand Rapids [MI] Press 5 September 1912: p. 12

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It is shocking to think that, even in 1912, a man would be needed to attend to the public portion of the work. We have previously read of Mrs Elizabeth Thorn’s heroic grave-digging expoits at Gettysburg. Here are two more female sextons:

A Queer Job

A Girl Becomes a Sexton and Digs Graves

Evansville, Ind., March 11 Miss Josie Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of a Civil War veteran who has been the sexton of a cemetery, has succeeded her father in the capacity of sexton, and is believed to be the only grave digger of her sex in the country. Her father, who is 87 years old, has become too feeble to do the work. Daily Herald [Biloxi, MS] 12 March 1904: p. 5

By the death of Mrs Elizabeth Geese at Lewis, England loses its only woman grave digger. On the death of her husband in 1879 she was appointed to carry on his duties at the Lewes Cemetery. She was 76 years of age. Patriot [Harrisburg, PA] 29 August 1904: p. 6

And this jocular comment about another woman undertaker. Mrs Daffodil suggests that the winsome lady would have been delighted to embalm the author.

A Boston woman is a licensed undertaker. One of the nicest things to have about, from the cradle to the grave, is a winsome, kindly-disposed woman. The man is a churl who wouldn’t gladly let a pretty lady undertaker embalm him. Marlborough Express 18 May 1894: p. 2

Our friends in the Colonies were also progressive in this field:

There is in Sydney [Australia] a lady undertaker. She dresses not in funereal hues, but in most cheerful tints. Observer, 24 January 1891: p. 4

The work begun by the early mortuary tradeswomen continues to-day with Australia’s high-profile “White Ladies” and the delightful Caitlin Doughty of “Ask a Mortician” and The Order of the Good Death.

More on funeral professionals–both ladies and gentlemen–may be found in The Victorian Book of the Dead, by Chris Woodyard, a look at the “popular culture” of Victorian death and mourning.

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.