COUNSELS TO WOMEN

Last night I watched a taped episode of “Downton Abbey” that sent me to bed musing about the advantages / disadvantages (?) of being an independent woman, one who had several careers, (and still has) did her own housework (and still does), maintained (and still does) her own finances, and hardly ever pleads a case of “the vapors” that assailed women of the late 19th and early 20th century. This morning, I got up and opened two file cases of articles published in The Daily Iberian, searching for one of my old columns, “Cherchez la femme,” in which I had a lot to say about the liberation of women.



My column in The Daily Iberian

 The column I sought and found had to do with my remarks to a man who had teased me about being a liberated woman, quipping that he had heard the Shah (this was 1975) had posted “Wanted” posters and offered a reward for me after I left Iran that year because of my incendiary writing in “In A Persian Market” and “Cherchez la femme” concerning the rights and appropriate place of women in society. After he had finished his tirade about contemporary women, I asked him if he had rather be married to the kind of woman who “wimped about” in 1875. Then I went home and wrote a column describing this frail creature, deriving material from a book entitled Counsels to Women, written in 1878. I am including some of the material below.

Seems that the fair maiden of 1875 gained her name as “fair” for several reasons. Poor woman was encased in a special housespun cocoon. She wasn’t allowed to warm up at the fireside because sitting over the fire spoiled her complexion, “causing it to become muddy, speckled and sallow.” And a breath of wind wasn’t allowed to touch her cheeks because strong air gusts caused her to become “wan as clay and bloodless,” or if the gales induced color, that color was termed the “hectic flush,” which foretold “speedy decay.”

I don’t know how this fair maiden stabilized her temperature in winter – she couldn’t walk in the wind and she couldn’t hang over a fire. If she sat too close to the fire, she not only ruined her complexion, she became nervous and dispirited.  She couldn’t turn her back to the fire as this brought on sickness and faintness, “injured the spine, weakened the spine marrow and debilitated the whole frame.”

Presuming our 19th century belle lived through the rigors of winter, she could tipple a little sherry.  According to Henry Chavasse who wrote "Advice to a Wife and Mother," published in England in 1878, a lady couldn’t eat her dinner unless she had a glass of sherry before or during dinner and one glass after dinner, but she was never to exceed two glasses of wine daily. If wine didn’t agree with her, she was to drink home-brewed ale or Burton bitter ale or good sound porter instead of water. However, if she drank beer, she had to exercise or otherwise she’d become bilious.

As if this fair female didn’t have enough trouble staying the right color, she had to carry along a valise of varmint repellants when she travelled or slept in a strange bed. She had to have four things in her trunk; namely, a box of matches so that at any moment in the night, she could strike a light as bugs never bit when there was a light in the room; a box of night lights; a packet of La Poudre Insecticide manufactured in France; and a four ounce bottle of oil of turpentine, a little of which was to be sprinkled between the sheets and on the pillow as the oil of turpentine kept the bugs at a respectful distance. The bug-besieged damsel had to be careful not to place the turpentine too close to the candle, or she might catch her hair on fire.

If she still had hair after her bout with the bugs, milady kept her mane tidy with an "application" for it. According to Chavasse, scented castor oil or coconut oil applied with an old toothbrush did the trick. And if her hair “fell off,” as he phrased it, she could use that same castor oil or coconut oil, rubbing it literally into the roots. As I write this, I can’t help wondering if the male who teased me about liberated women would have enjoyed climbing into bed with this turpentine smelling, well-oiled female who had gone to bed after tippling two glasses of strong sherry or stout ale!

Woebetide the female who showed precocity of intellect in the late 1870’s. Chavasse claimed that if she exhibited premature talents, greater arterial blood was sent to the brain, and this blood fed and excited inflammation, causing convulsions, water on the brain, insanity, or idiocy. “Precocity is an indication of disease,” summed up Chavasse.

Seems to me that this Englishman was one of the first male chauvinists who thought that women’s charms lay in intellectual inferiority, and he advvised young women to take up housewifery to keep healthy and happy. He polished off his counsels for the happy and healthy wife with Swift’s adage: “The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, rather than making cages [the home].”

ON THE USE OF THE COMMON FORK AND KNIFE

It all started with a remark made by Lady Mary, a daughter who is being urged by her aristocratic parents, the Crawleys, to marry an heir to the family fortune in the televised Downton Abbey series. The scene is a country home in Edwardian England, circa 1912, and the discussion centers on a gentleman who is sole heir to the kingdom of the Crawleys. After watching the heir’s table manners, Lady Mary remarks that she could never marry a man who couldn't hold his fork like a gentleman. “Oh,” I said to my friend who was watching the series with me: “I know how Brits feel about Americans’ table manners, and I wrote all about it in my column, Cherchez la femme, back in the 70’s.”

At noon today I unearthed a compilation of the columns, which I once planned to showcase in book form, and read aloud the column involving the use of the common fork at the lunch table. After reading it, I decided that there could be some Downton Abbey fans who would enjoy the revised column I'm posting below:

Good manners rank with good grooming and good behavior. And if you don’t believe that adage, ask the British. They’re sticklers for the proper use of china, glass, and silver. I know because I underwent considerable teasing about my American style of eating when we lived abroad.

The problem had to do with the common fork. One noonday at a church camp in the Garden of Evangelism in the Elburz Mountains near Tehran, Iran, I was casually cutting a piece of meat with knife in my right hand and fork in my left. When I transferred the fork to my right hand to devour the meat, I found several Brits looking at me and snickering. “Oh, you Americans,” one of them commented. “You always do things the wrong way—and certainly the hard way.”

If you’ve never tried eating continental style in the manner that my British friend recommended, you must try forking food “the proper way,” as the Brits say. You spear meat with you fork and cut it off with the knife. With the meat fixed on the prongs of the fork (prongs down, prongs down) you place the knife blade underneath. The Brits say, “A slight twist will help to fix it firmly.”

Don’t stop with the meat. You also pile a small amount of potatoes and vegetables on the topside of the prongs, along with the meat. The heavily-laden fork is then conveyed to the mouth by twisting the wrist and raising the forearm slightly. The biggest “no-no” is that of changing hands. And you aren’t supposed to stick your elbows out and raise your entire arm either.

I worked on this fork operation for the ten days of church camp I attended that summer of 1974, but I was still viewed as a clumsy fork user. “Why?” I asked my British friends, “why isn’t the fork used to scoop food when it is fashioned with a gentle curve in the middle for holding food?” Well, they didn’t know, and no amount of researching turned up the answer either.

Actually, mention of the fork in literature dates back to the 11^th century when a lady journeyed from Byzantium to Venice. She married a rich Doge, Domenico Selvo, in 1070. The first person in history to mention forks was an Italian named Saint Peter Damian. He wrote that this Doge’s wife from Byzantium did not touch her food with her fingers. She carried it to her mouth with certain gold, two-pronged forks she had brought with her from Byzantium. At that time, people were shocked by the lady’s extravagances, and very few people followed her example.

Well, forks aren’t everything. The Brits at the Tehran camp didn't know how to eat watermelon southern style. They tried to cut the melon in dainty snips just the way they cut meat. “Look,” I told them in my best Louisiana drawl, “watermelons are to be held. Put down those forks and knives and watch me.” I grasped a large slice of melon with both hands, lowered my face, and zipped through the choicest pulp, swooshing the melon from one side of my mouth to the other.

“But what do we do with the seeds?” they asked. Would you believe that there are now Brits who returned from their stint in Iran to live in places like Sussex, London, Surrey, and Buckinghamshire who mastered the art of spitting watermelon seeds through their teeth almost forty years ago?

Yes, I know good manners are as important as good grooming and good behavior, but we Americans also believe that good digestion is vitally important. And how can you digest food properly if you’re uptight about conveying food on a heavily-laden fork to the mouth?

Just between us, in that seed-spitting contest, I was lucky to get one watermelon seed through my teeth with the first shot (which landed in the lap of the Anglican minister who was director of the camp). And, truthfully, I always eat watermelon with a knife – sometimes with a fork.