PEA GREEN GAUZEAND PERIGORD PIE

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 January 1928, Page 9

PEA GREEN GAUZEAND PERIGORD PIE

What Did Great-Grandmama Read, Poor Girl, a Hundred Years Ago? These Collected “Gems” From Early Victorian Magazines Tell the Sad Story . . .

An amusing article &y T. Earnshaw Smith in “Eve,” with woodcuts by Helen Bapp. ■ HE other day, in a box' of family rubbish, I found four old magazines and an ( album bound in red morocco. There were the “Housekeeper’s Magazine” and “Family Economist” vf 1826, the “Ladies Pocket Magazine” of 1830 and 1837, and the “Drawing Room Scrap Book of 1849. The morocco album dated 1831 bulges with valentines and rich padded Christmas cards that still smell mustily of spice and roseleaves. The "Housekeeper’s Magazine is rich in nutriment of the solidest kind. It cont->ns, not mere articles, but “important papers” on an immense variety of subjects such as Marketing, Drunkenness, Cookery, Management of Income, Distilling, Baking, Brewing, Public Abuses and Domestic Medicine. How my great-great-grand-mother’s eyes must have ached as she spelt out those close-printed polysyllables uncheered by one pattern of cap or mantalec- Even the few woodcuts that have crept in seem to be there for some hortatory purpose. We a’fre shocked at the cruelty of lionbaiting, warned by a horrid presentment of the male and female treadmill, or discouraged by a picture of the Perugian mathematician who made a pair of wings,’ and broke his thigh in using them. The “Housekeeper’s Magazine” has little use for wings of any kind. In a romantic age it plucks poor Cupid of all but his most utilitarian feathers. The tender passioi _ which soars and hovers throughout the “Ladies’ Pocket Magazine” can only flutter lapiely like a barndoor fowl under the heavy foot of the “Family Economist.” If this journal was not read entirely by men, it was certainly written by them. The first number leads off ominously with Some Advice on the ■Choice of a Wife. “Romantic ideas of domestic felicity,” says this stern realist, “will infallibly give way to that true state of things which will show that a large part of it must arise from well-ordered affairs and an accumulation of petty comforts and conveniences.” “Beauty,” insists another, “is a dangerous property, tending to corrupt the mind of a wife.” The “t’amily Economist” loses no opportunity of hammering home its two great lessons that meekness and good cookery are all the ornaments a woman needs.“A Married Woman” (or was the traitor merely an Unmarried Man?) beseeches you “Make lhe study of your husband’s temper your great object. Never ( consider as a trifle what may tend to please him.” How much more successfully might poor Mary Conway, the heroine —or rather, the female protagonist of “The First Error” —have ordered her life had he listened to the advice of “A Married Woman.” Of mere beauty Mary had enough and to spare. She would b~ve tempted an angel ,to idolatry, declares her biographer. Henry was “prosperous, industrious, attentive and intelligent”—note the descending scale of virtues. “The morning of the matrimonial life of Henry and Mary wore every presage of a long, delightful and quiet day of joy.” But one afternoon Mary “had a little tea-party.” Henry returned late and tired. Horror of horrors! “His favourite dish was not there.” Mary was pert. “Henry cast a single

glance across the table, pushed back his chair, and rising, left the room.” He went out into the night and, for the first time, into the village tavern, from which he "eturned many hours later “boisterous with Bacchanalian juieps.” You can guess the rest. Henry became a drunkard and a gambler. “He died a lingering and awful death. His children grew up in ruin and Mary ended her life in poverty and obscurity.” Sometimes I ponder the '.oral of this melancholy tale. More often I wonder what was that favourite dish whose absence poisoned the Conways’ married life. Was it Perigord Pie or Candied Horehound? V-al Podovies or Barberry Marmalade or-Green Almond Tarts? Something tells me it was Perigord Pie. Henry sounds that kind of man. Still, might not Mary have won him back tot the hearth at the eleventh hour with a warm Sack Posset or a jug of Capillaire “which drinks exceeding pleasant”? The “Economist” abounds in such "receipts,” and fine prodigal receipts they are, inviting you to “Take sixteen pounds of Malaga raisins,” or tc “add twenty-eight pounds of lump sugar.” A “plain” cake which “eats very nice” —as indeed it should —contains among other things a pound of butter, nine eggs, and a glass of brandy. The “Economist” quite approved of your eating your money, but it sternly discouraged you from wearing it or wasting it in “vain cosmetics.” Unlike modern journals, it had a short way with advertisers. It implores its readers to “abstain from the whole list of those puffed recipes which stare us in the face in every newspaper.” For-bald-ness the edit rial remedy is the “stimulating power of onions, rubbed frequently on the affected parts, or a mixture of burdocks, alcohol and honey.” “These applications.” it concludes pessimistically, “are cheap and harmless, even where they do no good.” Under the heading of “cosmetics” it gives a truly remarkable recipe ’for a tooth paste made of tartar of vitriol, nyrrh, dragon’s blood, gumlac, ambergrise, muse and powdered charcoal.” The chief merit of this seems to have been that it only had to b£ used twice a week. If any enterprising manufacturer would care to put this on the market, I will gladly give him‘fuller details. Once, in its 526 pages, the “Housekeeper’s Magazine” is frivolous enough to give a recipe for lipsalve. A very good lip-

salve it sounds too; full of sweet almond oil and lemon and bergamot and of a “proper deep red in colour.” But this one lapse is slipped in under “Medicine” and buttressed on either side by Abernethy’s Prescription for Indigestion and the Emperor Napoleon’s Pectoral Pills. Afterwards it plunges with renewed vigour into subjects which seem to have lain nearer to its readers’ hearts —a Cure for the Garget in Cows, and Proper methods for dealing with Smut in Wheat and Measles in Swine. There is nothing bucolic about the “Ladies’ Pocket Magazine.” Romance “after” Scott and Byron, and a little fashionable religion satisfy the intellects of the adorable young persons for whom it was intended. The true religious ecstasy is reserved for the fashion talk, which is breathless and dazzling, ♦oaining with blond lace and bouillons, pea-green gauze and “painted Indian taffeties.” There are the most enchanting engravings, handcoloured in pink and lavendar and maroon, of ladies dressed in the London and Paris “stiles.” They have tiny waists and voluminous festooned skirts; their smooth brows support enormous hats and head-dresses. When I read the description of even a “simple home costume” I cannot help feeling that we have sacrificed a great deal of. amusement in the business of getting emancipated. Shall we ever again wear “a dress of saffron-coloured gros-de-Naples simply ornamented down the front by a chain work of braiding”? The sleeves are “a la Mameluke” . . . they have mancherons at the shoulder of fine broad lace. In the centre of a lace ruffle round the wrist is a bracelet of dark hair clasped by an agate set in gold. A chemisette fichu of clear India muslin is worn under this dress, surmounted by a triple ruff of lace, under which is tied a fiarcee of blue satin edged by saffroncoloured fringe. A cap of broad rich blond forms the head-dress, orna-

mented with ribbon of celestial blue. The ear pendants are of gold, and the shoes of pink kid.” The ‘ large leisureliness of these female magazines tempts : c to rapturous dawdling. I should like to quote from romances of lovely orphans, and ill-fated beauties, of Rosamunds and Cicelies and Walters and Letitias. But I will restrict myself to one which rr y well stand for them all. “I have always admired the romantic appearance of this spot,” said Wilson, as they stood opposite to, and within a few paces of, the solitary tomb. “See how beautifully those willows aud cypress trees cluster round and droop over the antique monument, as if mourning the hapless fate of the wretched one who lies below.” You have only to glance through the titles, “Love’s Falconrie,” “The Noble Revenge,” “The Fair Penitent,” “The Maniac Maid,” to guess that these studies in -risibility are all pitched in the same key.