A Happy Victorian Home Part 1

"STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS," by Harriet Prescott Spofford, Published by the Christian Herald - 1897

A HAPPY HOME, GOOD ECONOMY, RESOURCEFUL LIVING, SPIRITUALLY STRONG, HEALTHY MINDS, AND CHRISTIAN VALUES

     As a regional historian, I confess, I've spent more time mucking around the heritage of the Victorian era, than any other time in our regional, provincial and national history. Spending most of my years of research, examining Muskoka's pioneer period, up to and including the time of Queen Victoria's death, a whisker inside the new century, and being associated with two museums celebrating that same period, I have become a victim of my own passion. I should know more about other periods than I do, but I suppose there's still time to brush up on what I learned in school. I used to spend a lot of time on my own, wandering about the halls and rooms of Bracebridge's Woodchester Villa, built in Victorian times, and as a museum reflected many of those values that made the period of her monarchy so notable, followed and revered even in North America. There was always something mournful about the house, largely because of the way the family estate was decorated, such that it did look like a really large vintage funeral home. It wasn't the fault of the house, but the reality of the furnishings and adornments, even the way the children's bedroom was decorated, giving it a profound sense of melancholy, when in fact, it should have been much brighter and lighter in colors used, if only to show off the great antique dolls and toys, in what should have been a festive environment, even in respect to the Victorian ideals. It didn't have to be oppressive in appearance, but it's exactly what visitors used to complain about, when our tour guides asked for feedback about the museum in general. I understood what they meant, and we did try to lighten up the atmosphere, with additional lighting, but it still made people feel uneasy, as if there was a visible ghost sitting on the edge of the bed. Maybe there was! The point I'm trying to make, is that because I loved Woodchester, and my job as site manager, I just took it all in stride, and we tried to instill some merriment into the dark environs, by playing music through the day, and making sure the curtains were pulled back to allow in as much light as possible. Yet, it was the Victorian ambience, and we had to accept that, for historical accuracy, we couldn't jazz it up too much, or we would be misrepresenting the period the Bird family dwelled here, in the late 1800's. I learned a lot about the Victorian era, by being in the middle of it, on an almost daily basis. It influenced me, because I began buying Victorian chairs, cupboards, tables, dressers, and china, to bring a little bit of that history to our home. Suzanne, at first, and second, and third didn't like it, and told me so; but usually too late, because I had usually made the purchase in her absences.

     When Suzanne, my business partner, and I, first began working as a duo in the antique business, shortly after we were married, for some obvious reasons we became interested, by daily immersion, in the Victorian era. Part of it had to do with the fact, I was one of the directors, (and founders) of the Bracebridge Historical Society, and the heritage property under its administration, known then as "Woodchester Villa and Museum;" otherwise referred to as "The Bird House," named after the estate owner, Henry Bird, of Bird's Woollen Mill, on the Muskoka River in Bracebridge. The restored octagonal house, was brought back to its Victorian grandeur, and Suzanne and I had to spend so much time there, as site managers in the late 1980's, that it just kind of rubbed off on us. Even at auctions, and hunting around in antique shops, we found ourselves spending a lot of money and time researching, and owning relics representing the period of Queen Victoria's reign. There's still a lot of it out there, especially in the way of books on home economy and Christian values related to the upbringing of children, and abstinence in all its many forms.
     Today, at least in our opinion, having been garnered from a small, simply appointed shop in rural Ontario, the Victorian interests have declined seriously, in this new era of Baby Boomer influences in the antique and collectable market. And younger collectors seem to have very little interest in the Victorian period, and I can't say I blame them. Victorian furniture is often dark, big, and hard to fit into a condominium decorating scheme. Woodchester Villa was decorated with heavy, darkly stained furnishings, with dim illumination from elegant and extravagant light fixtures, that don't fit with a lot of contemporary, or even traditional-country interior designs. It doesn't mean to suggest we don't have Victorian-chasers moving about out there, just that they are fewer than in the past. Our customers want comfortable, attractive chairs, not ones that swallow you whole, or that are for parlor sitting only. Meaning, a short period. These chairs and settees look comfortable but most are the exact opposite. In the Victorian ideal, it was most appropriate that you felt a little uncomfortable, so that you wouldn't dwell in one place for too long, as to leave a imprint on the upholstery. Posture was a big deal then, and slumbering was to be done on the appropriate fainting couch or day-bed, not in a parlor chair in a cluttered but elegant room dedicated to social intercourse.
     Part of our research work, was to build a Victorian-period archives of research material, to better understand the time frame in Old England, and how it was interpreted in the colonies, up to and including the Queen's death early in the 1900's. We picked up Harriet Prescott Spofford's guidebook a few years ago, because it had some interesting kitchen related sections, including recipes and food handling advisories, which we found useful for the cookery archives we keep on hand, in the shop. It has an amazing array of helpful hints, from the final years of Queen Victoria's reign, having been published in this current edition, in the year 1897. We love scouring through these books, of which we have dozens, to harvest and re-publish some of the stories and helpful hints, from the beliefs and procedures known and practiced in this period of world history. Suzanne and I are suckers for those British produced documentary series, we sometimes view on TV Ontario, about "Christmas on a Victorian Farm," and ones that delve back even further in time. We originally thought we might, one day, try this throw-back thing ourselves, and to do this, we would require the help of authors such as "Harriet Spofford," and many others, who apparently knew how to navigate the prevailing hardships, of the Victorian economy, it's standards of living, and its neighborhood conundrums. Here are a few tips from the book, "Stepping Stones to Happiness," circa 1897, as published as a money-maker by the Christian Herald. It became a popular book, and was on the parlor table of many Victorian homes. This one was found in Orillia, Ontario.
     "In all Ages, the search for happiness has been the ultimate aim and desire of human effort - happiness here and hereafter. To those searchers, in every station in life, this book is dedicated, in the hope that it may be the means of guiding them, by pleasant paths, to the true Temple of Happiness, whence flow those delectable streams that refresh the hearts and rejoice the souls of all who enter the quest with a pure and resolute purpose," writes Mrs. Spofford. "Happiness is equally attainable to the poor and the rich, the youth and the veteran; and though multitudes have missed the path, stepping stones to happiness will lead them back to the way, by which they may surely find it. May they, in turn, extend loving help to other struggling wayfarers on the same journey."
     THE HEALTH OF THE HOME - "In obtaining this house which is to be so dear a shelter, be it on the asphalt or under the green bough, we have of course been particular about the site, for it may be 'writ large' but country is beautiful only when it is healthful,' and this sanitary condition is not to be taken for granted. Rosebushes in the door-yard in too frequent cases, supercede drain tiles under it, and the cupola too, rarely holds a ventilating shaft. In the city there are many houses that are built over old water courses and the would-be occupant is wise when he procures an old map of the city, which will let him known whether or not he is subject to danger," she writes. "It is the houses built over these old choked, or diverted water courses, whose occupants are the sufferers from malaria. In the country house, the chief risks to health, come from the pollution of the water supply, and of the air, by contact with waste matter. Owners of property are left to build or not to build their drains, and to bestow them perhaps as ignorance and indolence prompts, with no official supervision, and the consequence is that sometimes the lovelist spots are nests of low fever, diptheria and dysentery."
     THE PREVENTION THAT IS BETTER THAN CURE: "It is when pickling and preserving and house-cleaning, are over that the good house-wife (circa 1897), will turn her attention to these affairs, more vital by far, than anything that conduces merely to the pleasure of the eye, or of the table, and will look about her to see if her drains and sinks, her well and water pipes, are all in good order, and if her cellar is what a cellar should be, underlying as it does, the whole life of the house; and capable of sending, from its position in the sub-structure, bane or blessing, pure air or fetid, through every crevice of the dwelling. And there is no circumstance, by the way, that points more plainly to the wisdom of making every exertion to own one's home, of foregoing luxury and display, and all other gratifications that can be foregone with safety to soul and body, and laying away the wherewithal to purchase the place, with which one can do as one chooses, and, uprooting what is already wrong, plant wells, and dig drains where it is best; wisdom, since although the expenditure of the same money in choice of food, in fine raiment, or in costly equipage, may be even more delightful, there are no delights that are equal to those of health, and health can only be permanently secured when we are masters of our own situation. If the drain that receives the outflow of the house, can be connected with the refrigerator or too near the well, or if the conduits from the sink, apt to be made of wood, and frequently leaking on the way, are equally near, there is no human power that can bar out of the infectious fever from that house, except the removal of the drains and conduits to a safe distance; for, inappropriately to taste or scent, atom by atom, drop by drop, the well is poisoned; the milk in the refrigerator is poisoned, and life is surer and better underneath the dew of the upas-tree," records Mrs. Spofford, in her Victorian self-help journal.
     "But the position of these things, it is, of course, not always in the housewife's power to determine, and she must make the best of things as they are, and the best is to have them cleansed, yearly in the frosty weather, when the evil germs set free at their opening, perish of the withering chill before they can reach the stomachs and lungs of the inmates of the house. A thorough cleansing of these spots every fall, is not so expensive as a course of doctor's visits, and does not mount up like the druggist's bill; and if it is disagreeable, it is one of the prices we must pay for enjoyment of comfort and health, remembering that there is no such thing as immunity for the trouble of this oversight while in a state of civilization; that this oversight, in fact, is the groundwork of civilization, and that in matters of sickness and suffering, as in matters of politics, the old adage holds equally true, that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
     "But as it is ruinous to poison the water of the well, from which we drink, it is quite as ruinous to poison the air which we breathe, and that is the part in the house, which the neglected cellar has, it in its power, to play. Wherever vegetables have been stored, there some have run over the bins and been trodden on the floor, or have run into the dark corners of the bins and been overlooked, till they have decayed and transmitted their decay to others; there has been a 'sup of milk,' spilled on the floor, a bit of butter, a few drops of the drippings, some greasy brine from the barrel, some festering stuff from a broken bottle; there is a bit of mould here, a fungus there - in short, the witches' caldron is as ready as when the witches danced round it, on the heath of Forres, and threw into it their horrid ingredients. Let now a wet season arrive upon this condition of things, let a hot and humid August come, or let a January thaw of snow, and slush set in; let some water trickle into the cellar, or let the stones of the wall merely absorb the dampness and suffer it, to ooze through there, and the putrid air that steals up through the studding of the walls, behind every partition, up beside every chimney, and through every door and every crack, brings disease stalking-in with the death's head behind it, only to go out of the door feet foremost."
     In tomorrow's blog, we'll re-visit this curious Victorian home advisor, and the kindly Mrs. Spofford, to see what else we should brush-up on, that our great grandparents may have neglected to tell us about.