Husband hunting 1910

Sophia Nicholson, Norman’s niece gets married in October 1912.

I don’t know her story, but she visited Richmond area in July 1911 before going out West. She visited Tighsolas twice, ‘but did not take off her hat’ despite being asked to spend the night.

(Interesting! She must have stayed a while, not a few minutes I gather. So if in those days you came for say, tea,you kept your hat on. Was this because putting on a hat was not an easy thing? Or fixing up the hair once the hat was taken off was not an easy thing.)

Her Father Gilbert and Brother were in Edmonton already. Gilbert is widowed, so likely Sophia was raised with someone else and just then rejoined the family.

And then she goes out West and within a year is married.

This is not an invitation,only an announcement. Maybe Gilbert was afraid the Nicholsons, who were having money issues, would descend on him and stay. His brother Norman often asked him to if he should go West and Gilbert said NO, This is Young Man’s Country.

 

Marion Watters marriage announcement, 1914. She is often mentioned my books, especially Threshold Girl but also in Diary of a Confirmed Spinster (about to be posted) and Biology and Ambition, Marion Nicholson’s story, being written.

In 1912/13, Mae lives with Flora and Marion on Hutchison in the great experiment. She has another boyfriend named Minty. Edith calls her ‘a great flirt.’ Well, it worked and Edith never married.

All this goes to show is that the two years Marion and Hugh waited to get married was a long period.

There were reasons. Firstly, Hugh was seeing another woman in May 1911, when he meet Marion. I know because he blew her off in a letter in September. He told her they had ‘no understanding’ and he only thought of her as ‘a very good friend.’

 

Letter from Donald Nicholson of Lingwick to Norman Nicholson “Bark Dealer” in 1893. “Sorry they are so poorly at Gilbert’s.” May be when wife died.  Beautiful handwriting for a man.

War and Prices, the Cost of Living 1914-1918

A page from Oct 1914 House Accounts, Norman Nicholson of Richmond, Quebec.

I have 50 years of Household Accounts for the Nicholson Family of Richmond, 1883 to 1921 and in those years, not that much changed with respect to what they bought and how much they spent.

I’m assuming there was wartime inflation, so I scanned two pages from October 1914 and two from November 1918.

For the story, Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about Edith Nicholson in 1910,  the follow up toThreshold Girl about Flora, I am using the Household Accounts to tell the story of her childhood.

This morning I had a bowl of Harvest Crunch. I haven’t eaten that for years. My husband found it on sale at Costco. That product was one of the first pseudo health foods. I could look it up, but I’m pretty sure I ate it in the late 70′s. I think it is pretty fattening. It has coconut oil.. but I don’t think that is as bad for you as previously thought. I mean the Thai’s live on it.

I usually eat Bon Matin 14 grain toast for breakfast with multi berry jam.

The short of it is, we still eat ‘by habit’ but new products are being introduced every day. Not the case back then, although that era saw the birth of a number of iconic products that became favorites over the century, thanks to heavy advertising. As I wrote in an earlier post, Crisco was invented in 1911, but they tried to get Margaret Nicholson to use it in 1916. Likely because butter had risen in price due to the war.

as opposed to: 1918

Edwardian Oxymoron.

 

An Edwardian club chair.  Marion Nicholson Blair used this chair.

 

(You can read all about her early life at the Tighsolas website that showcases her family letters from the 1908-1913 era.  I am writing a digital trilogy based on the letters. The first ebook is Threshold Girl, about her sister Flora, a college girl in 1911/12.)

 

Well, today, someone came to my Tighsolas website looking up “Dorothy Nixon” Gone with the Windows Video.

 

Gone With the Windows is an essay I wrote a few years ago that is now in a couple of ESL (English as a Second Language) textbooks and also is posted on my website.

 

Occasionally an ESL  student will come to my website trying to find an answer to a question about the essay.

 

This time (I am assuming) a student was looking for a real shortcut, a video. It’s a visual day and age, that’s for sure. And this search engine request reminds me of that.

 

Of course there is no video for my essay, but I am beginning to think I must someone make my essays more visual. And I don’t mean by merely painting pictures with words as in ‘show’ don’t ‘tell’.  That’s old hat.

 

Many thousands of students have come to my Tighsolas website looking up this and that and they usually find what they want. Titanic Fashion, Women’s rights, Suffrage movement in Canada, Laurier Era cost of living, women in 1910….

 

But just this week I had to laugh: someone came to my website looking up “Edwardian Ikea.”

 

Lord Bellamy: Hudson, Lady Lindamere  has just sat on that new chair my parlour and crushed it to pieces.  Where did you get it?”

 

Hudson: At a new furniture store on the Kensington High Street. Ikea.

 

I say this because I just saw a program where some craftsman recreated the main parlour of the Titanic and they created a leather club chair from scratch using 100 year old methods. It took a number of highly-skilled craftsman many days to make this chair and a total of (I think) 60 man hours or more of labour. The chair was filled with horsehair.

 

The chair pictured above  is also from the Edwardian era and, I can tell you,  it weighs a tonne.  Solid piece of work. It’s been re-upholstered many times, but maybe originally it contained horsehair.

 

That’s why I had to laugh: The words “Ikea” and “Edwardian” seem to be rather oxymoronic (is that a word?) contradiction in terms.

 

I am thinking of going through my archives and making  a list of the ridiculous requests. 1800 automobile is one I remember. But then the search may have been just a high school student and to a 14 year old 1900 and 1800 are no different.  (Actually, the first auto, a kind of wheel chair with a boiler behind it, was invented in 1820, so maybe not so ridiculous.)

 

I just checked, Ikea was founded in 1943, closer to 1910 than 2010!!

Titanic Era Life of Women

Coats from Eaton’s Catalogue, winter 1913-14, range 12.00 to 25.00. Mid range. The catalogue opens with glamour coats, fur coats worth 80 dollars or more, muskrat, seal and the most expensive, persian lamb.. There are also some coats for 10.00 and 5.00. In the 16.oo range, cheviot, vicuna, or, a bit more expensive, wool.

Following is an ‘edited’ letter from late 1912. Margaret Nicholson is visiting her girls in Montreal. You see, Marion, her gung-ho daughter, has taken the brave step of finding a flat for herself and her sister and two friends, all teachers, very bold of her. But it’s near impossible in 1913 for working girls (sic) to  keep a flat and a job. So Mom has to come to help. (Besides, without Mom there, people are very suspicious.

My Threshold Girl story (on free ebook) tells the story of Flora Nicholson’s year at Macdonald Teachers College 1911/1912. I am writing the follow up, Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about sister Edith’s life in the era, where she loses her great love in a Cornwall hotel fire. I end in August 1912, in Boston, where she is on a trip with sister Marion. Edith has no prospects, work or romantic, for she has quit her teaching job in May.

Marion’s story, the third book in the digital trilogy, will tell about her life between May 1911 to May 1913, the two years she is courted by Hugh Blair, while working as a teacher in Little Burgundy.  Despite her huge ambitions, she ends up giving up teaching to marry Hugh. This letter suggests some reasons why.

2401 Hutchison

November 11, 1912

Dear Norman,

You see by the heading that I am still in the city.

Marion and Flora won’t hear to me going home and E writes for me to stay as she is getting on all right – has one of the Pepplers when she stays in the house. I will not stay more than another week. I do wish Edith was here and that we could be together for the winter as they ought to have someone here. Your letter did not reach me until Friday pm, as Edith sent it–so I felt a little worried as I always got them Thursday.

I am so sorry about your coat. I gave the right add to Lann McMorine. You better make some enquiries there about it. Might be at Cochrane.

Edith writes that Mr. Dyson said he bought thirty cords of wood and would supply our winter’s wood and would bring a cord any time and to let him know so don’t worry any more about wood. She also sent me notice that taxes were due.

Now I am very sorry that Herb seems to be so careless, debt seems to be no worry to him. I hope you have just let him know how hard it is for you to be away from your family and that he might try and do better. He has not written me for several weeks . I really cannot understand how he can do it.

Well, the weeks are going by and Xmas will soon be here I don’t know what the girls can do with the flat; or if they will be able to get someone to keep fires if they want to go home. They will have two weeks holidays. They were talking it over but said they would decide when you came. The weather has been quite nice since I came in here.

I have not bought a coat. Takes more than I had. Marion got a long navy blue one that will be very comfortable this winter. Paid 16.50 and Flora got a brown the same price. They really needed them.

I have not gone anywhere not been up to Cleveland’s yet. I have been having trouble with my teeth and as Marion was having work done at Cleveland’s Friday, I had him look at mine. He said he would do an hours work for me Monday so I am to go at three o’clock, Too bad yours are giving you trouble. I think it is caused from cold, my front teeth at least one of them felt loose, but he said he did not think it was but found cavities in others. M. had five filled.

Marion said she was going to write you and tell you about Mr. Hugh Blair. He seems very nice. Went home Saturday to Three Rivers. There are a good many things that he can do such as fixing window blinds, but Marion won’t let me ask him much. We are trying to put the double windows on here. I want to see them on before I go, although so far they are not needed.

I don’t think there is any danger of them getting behind: the four girls pay 25 dollars each. They would rather do it than board. They say it amounted to about that at Mrs. Ellis’s.

Now don’t worry about Herb. We cannot help it now. If the work stops there you must just take a trip out west. See why he does not at least keep himself. He must know that Marion paid Aunt Han’s note. He never wrote her or mentioned it to me. Write when you get this and add to Richmond.

They say I will be here two weeks more but I don’t like to leave Edith alone . She said she would go to Kingsbury for a visit but she thought it was too cold and just stayed at home.

Your loving Wife

Margaret

Flora is always saying she is going to write but there is so much going on they don’t have time and when I write often they think I tell all.

Tighsolas House of Light.

Tighsolas Floor plan as drawn by Norman, most likely.

If anything HASN’T changed much, since 1910, it is the way houses look on the outside. If you flip through the pages of a 1910 magazine your eyes are met by the exact same styles that are being erected today, at least in my neck of the woods. Well, everywhere from what I have seen. A friend, visiting some corner of China, emailed me a pic of a ‘new development’ and it looked just like the houses they are building here, in Vaudreuil-Dorion Quebec.

Women no longer wear shirtwaists and corsets and skirts to the ground, as they did in 1910. Indeed, there have been myriad female fashion ‘looks’ over the past century, from flapper shift to little black dress to suit with the big shoulders to mini skirts and go go boots, but house fashion has stayed the same. Indeed, there’s a cachet about older homes, despite the fact their infrastructure is iffy and they have not nearly enough electric outlets to accomodate all the modern gadgets in a household.

I personally love the experimental 20th century designs from Frank Lloyd Wright on down, but they never really took off with average people, for whatever reason. You know, homes with natural woods, clean lines and no ‘symbolic’ or ‘anacronistic’ decoration, like shutters. Modern suburban houses may be encased in aluminium or some poly-plasticky stuff, but they still look like great grandma’s homestead. The Nostalgia Factor is key in home design and that says a lot about us. The movie Fahrenheit 451 may pretty well have nailed the politics of today, but erred on the look of the homesteads people ‘of the future’ would have – unless, of course, we’re talking about Denmark.

The picture above is of Tighsolas floor plan. My husband, who visited there often in the 70′s says the sketch is out of proportion. The kitchen on the right was much bigger.

Tighsolas, the house, is a key ‘character’ in Flo in the City, my novel in progress, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ and being written on this blog. Why? For many reasons.

Tighsolas was much more than a ‘shelter’ for the Nicholsons who descended from Isle of Lewis crofters who were ‘cleared’ from their Hebrides homes in the 1800′s. It was their source of pride, their anchor, their one asset, as well as the brick albatross around their necks.

I have all the records. Norman Nicholson built Tighsolas for about 2, 700 dollars in 1896, the year Laurier came to power. He inspected every slate shingle, every brick, rejecting more than he kept. (According to family lore only 3 shingles needed changing in 50 years.)

I asked my husband to describe Tighsolas for me, on the inside, so that I could paint a picture of it in my novel.

Like many fine Victorian homes it had a back stairs (off the kitchen) and a front stairway. (In rich homes this was so that servants and their masters wouldn’t pass on the stairs.)

The rooms all could be closed off to preserve heat. There were French doors leading to the living room, or parlour, which was used only for guests, the furniture draped in protective coverings.

The doorways were framed in darkly varnished oak mouldings with medallions at the corners, which was very Victorian and the doors were very solid, ‘not like the cheap things we have’. This was to keep the house warm in winter.

From the letters I can deduce that the house was cool on hot days in summer, except for during the 1911 heatwave, where it got so hot inside the Nicholsons slept outside on the porch.

There probably was a furnace in the cellar, which was very cramped. The bathroom was upstairs. My husband also recalls that there were hardwood floors with wide slats. (These may have been put in in 1913.)

The style of the house, from what I have learned, is Queen Anne, but less ornamental than the other Queen Anne houses around them. The roof had a number of levels and the porch had fancy ornamentation, but in general, it was not a showy house.

In fact, I believe it perfectly reflects the Nicholsons character, solid, attractive, not too big or too small, gracious but not ostentatious.

One of the first places my husband took me after meeting me in 1984 was to Richmond, to drive by Tighsolas, even though he hadn’t been there since January 1977, when he visited his great-aunt Edith, who was 93 years old, blind, and on her death bed. The house was falling apart at the time of our visit, in the early eighties, with no porch at all. I was not impressed, but happy for the two hour drive to Richmond, situated in an area of great beauty in the Eastern Townships.

Tighsolas had fallen out of family hands just a few years before. I have letters from 1905 where son Herb is suggesting the Nicholsons sell Tighsolas, which means House of Light in Gaelic. (Tighsolas had a lot of windows.) They debated that for years, and almost lost the house in the 1910 era which I write about in Flo in the City, but ended up holding onto it. Flo died there, too, in December 1977.