Docu-dramas

Marion Nicholson Blair in 1939.. 55 years old.

This is a nice portrait of Marion, five years before she died.

I have not been able able to find that Food and Cookery from 1911, or my Delineator or Pictorial Review, but I did find Le Salon de la Mode from July 1911, which I may somehow stick into my story.

Yesterday, I listend to an Afternoon Play on BBC Radio Four called A Terrible Beauty, about the deep friendship between Maude Gonn and W. B Yeats.

I guess you can call it a docu drama, in that the play tried to fill us in on the history while telling a bit of a story…. That’s sort of what I want to do with Flora in the City (or Threshold Girl.)..

This play made Yeats seem like a bit of a middle aged fool. Alas.

Forcing Myself to Focus

Marion?

Maybe I should just write a play for the year 1911. Maybe I have bitten off more than I can chew with these 6 years 1908-1913.

You know, when I first found the stash of Nicholson letters, I read the 1911 year at Macdonald Teaching College first. Why? Because they were mostly between Marion and Flo who both had nice handwriting!

But now, six years later, I know so much more about the era. Imagine, it has taken me six years to research six years in history. How funny.

I think I can get all the major themes into 1911, Flora’s year at Ste-Anne de Bellevue, where she went into town to see plays with her sisters who were both already teachers in the big city.

All the social welfare themes, suffragette themes, the education reform themes, all tied together.

And now I know I must also focus on the Presbyterian’s anti-semitism and racism. Marion’s issue will be her black students and Jewish friend from Normal School. Edith’s issue: all the suffragette and new woman stuff. Margaret that year was fighting with the missionary ladies, because she has no interest in helping the less fortunate in that way and with her own family over the care of her aging mother. And there were all those deaths in Richmond 1912, including her own brother Dan.

I can start this play right now.

“Matel, I’ve been accepted into teaching school!” said Flora Nicholson, Yea ( wildly the fanning the air over her head with the envelope and letter.

Oh, thank god. I knew Inspector R. would come through for us.

Flora, take care, you’ll injure yourself waving your arm around like that. Give me the letter!

No, I’ll read it out to you. I must practice my elocution.

July 1911 – Long Hot Summer

I took a look today at the July 1, 1911 edition of the Montreal Gazette. I have recently read The Perfect Summer 1911, by Juliet Nicolson, about England in 1911, where there was a Coronation and a heatwave.

Well, there was a heatwave in Quebec, too. I have the Nicholson letters from the summer of 1911 to prove it.

And there was a coronation too. The same one, of course, as Canada was (is) part of the British Empire.

The film of the Coronation made it to Montreal and was shown at King Edward Park as part of the Dominion Day Celebrations. King George had been crowned but a week before, and a negative copy of the film of the Coronation was put directly on a boat to Canada and developed en route, so that Canadians could, without delay, hear The King’s Speech (I’m not referring to Colin Firth’s new movie, here, although it is supposedly terrific and a crowd-pleaser, but to the Daddy) as well as see footage of Sir Wilfrid and other Canadian luminaries who attended. (Apparently, it had taken a month for news of Queen Victoria’s Coronation to reach Canada so this was proof of the great advances in technology since that time.Well, duh. )

No doubt Sir Wilfrid wanted the exposure as an election was coming up and his Free Trade stance was not popular.

This July 1st Edition of the Montreal Gazette has as editorial about the Coronation, “In some sense and fashion, the Coronation of George V and Mary may be said to have awakened the enthusiasm of loyalty, patriotism and Imperial oneness.”

This edition also had an article claiming that vacationers were leaving the city in record numbers although no mention is made of the heat. Nicolson, in her book, talks about the sea side vacations taken in 1911 by Londoners, upper and middle class, to escape the record heat.

Trains to Portland (for Old Orchard Beach, Maine) were packed. Also trains to Halifax.

But for those who stayed in the city, this 1911 Dominion Day there was always Dominion Park where you paid extra to see Fighting the Flames “The Greatest Spectacle ever Seen” and some minstrel singers and a singing comedienne and North America’s greatest illusionist. They appeared to have cornered the market on hyperbole in that era. Today we have marketingese, another kind of slight of hand, illusion – or is it delusion.

And for those who want to escape the heat, the Princess Theatre was hosting a travel show, “ideal location as the theatre is always cool” with ‘scenes’ films or just photos? of the South Pole with penguins and ice floes and polar bears (What?); A Day in Venice; Milan Cathedral; Hawaiian Surf and the Life of the Butterfly (with slo-mo I guess) and Danish Dragoons on horseback and a big dog show.

If there were indeed pictures of of the South Pole, they must have been from Scott’s first expedition. In 1911 he was on his ill-fated second expedition. (I loved the book Scott on the Antarctic, which I read in elementary school.)

And at Sohmer Park there were some minstrels, again, offering up “representations of Southern Fun” and some jugglers and the Field Brothers, a song and dance team and some strong men. The usual

What were the Nicolson women doing on July 1, 1911? Well, I have no letters for that exact date, (in other years they attended Dominion Day celebrations in Richmond) but I know that Marion finished school on the 25th of June and went up to Hudson, Quebec (where her grandson and his wife (me) would make a home) and sailed on the Ottawa River, and she then took some car trips around Richmond, Quebec. Edith went to Sherbrooke with friends and then entertained the daughter of the Principal at her school at Tighsolas. And Flo, well, she failed French and was upset, but she still got into teaching school. It had been so hot in Richmond in June, Margaret and Flora had slept out on the verandah. They hadn’t been scared, because they had Floss, their dalmation, for protection – and their neighbours were doing the same. (Tramps from the trains were always a fear.)

The Nicholson women were ‘cash-poor’ middle class, but they did not lack for friends, well off professional class friends with automobiles who could take them on car excursions to the countryside or surrounding towns or even as far as Montreal. And as I have written before, in the 1910 era, car rides were considered a terrific form of entertainment. Indeed, cars rides were cutting into the theatre business’s profits, according to a 1910 article in the New York Dramatic Mirror.

The next year Edith and Marion would visit Boston relations in the summer. Flora had gone out to Boston in 1908 and that figures largely in my book Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

For a July 6, 1911 letter written by Margaret with some cute anecdotes www.tighsolas.ca/page168.html

At the end she warns husband Norman not to get too personal in the letters as you can never tell who will read them. (Like anyone in the world in 100 years’ time.)

The "Story" of 1908

I found the 1905-1908 store list and I found some interesting items.

1) They actually bought brandy. Now, I assumed they were Temperance Types, they attended temperance lectures and gave money to temperance society. Hmm. Maybe it was for cooking Maybe they were ‘on the fence’ or maybe they found a rationale for a nip of brandy.

2) In the higher grades of Academy, school fees were considerable. Not the 25 cent a month as all through school, but 3.00 a month. So, I’ll mention that in Flo in the City: I’ll have Flora feel ‘guilty’ for this money spent. I doubt the parents would have used this fact to make her feel guilty for doing poorly.

3) They brought a KODAK for 5.00 in 1904. So a Kodak camera, likely, took this picture! And all the others.

4)Ice cost 1.25 a month. So I can mention that in the story. And each time the man brought it in, they paid 5 cents.

5) I have Flora brushing her teeth, but wasn’t sure if they used ‘powder’ or paste. They bought tooth polish and tooth powder.

Hmm

And then I started to look at the 1883 book, when Norman got and Margaret got married. That list is illuminating, it shows that it was expensive to get married and set up house in the Victorian age if you were middle class. Indeed, it looks like they spent the next year buying things for the house. And then Edith came along.

Here’s the first bit:

Setting Up House 1883

Horse Hire 2.50
To m 60
Trunk for Stage 25
Cartage for Box 15
Paid to J. Farmer 25
Post cards 05
1 roll carpet 24.10
Express on Money 25
Express on Carpet 50
Cartage on Carpet 10
2 tickets to concert 20
Masonic dues 2.00
¼ lbs peppermints 08
Tickets to DWN and return 60
Letter stamps 09
C A Bangs on stoves 38.24
Skating rink 20
1 ½ pound nails 05
1 ½ dry screw nails 05
Putting up windows 50
Suit of clothes 20.00
Freight on furniture 1.77
Cartage 50
Painting 100
Letter stamps 12
Furniture 136.00
Express on oney 35
Wedding Cake 5.00
Horse hire 1.25
Stove shovel 15
Cartage 15
4 pairs gloves
Stove Brush 15
Ladies ring 5.00
Scarf 75
1 litman collar 15
Hair cut and shave 25
Reverend R .W. McLeod 12.00
Letter stamp 03
Horse hire 3.00
1 frying pan 40
2 bake pans 45
1 scrubbing brush 20
7 ½ pound meat 63

Bill of goods 34.72
3 lbs of fish 21
Carpet thread 25
Paper and envelopes 20
Pass bok 25
Letter stamps
Trunk by wagon
1 ¼ pound steak 12
4 tassells 30
8 yrds cord 12
¼ lbs pepper 05
Bath brick 09
To M 2.00
Church collection 20
2 lbs currants
2 oz nutmeg
3 doz clothes pins
One clothes line
2 lbs raisins
Hardware of Bags 4.25
Pennington furniture 45.50
2 lbs meat 20
Treat of cigars 35
Table mats 60
2 lbs butter 44
6 lbs pork 75
Set of flat irons 1.50
Flour sieve 20
Stove lifter 10
Charitable purposes 20
Express on Carpet 40
2 bottles of ink 05
Groceries 52
Linen thread 10
Comprised yeast 02
1 quarter of oats
Carpet 4.35
Daily Witness 3.00
Registered letter 02
55 feet of wood
Clock 3.40
2 2/3 pound meat 25
Horse hire 2.00
Treat figs 25
Tickets to concert 50
3 lbs pork 39
1 loaf bread 10
4 lbs butter 90
Charitable purposes 10
Skating rink 40
5 lbs beef 30
2 ½ yards table linen 1.00

Having a Heatwave 1911

Emmaline Pankhurst 1913

I’ve read the first four chapters of The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicolson, about 1911 in England and it’s a lot of fun. But I also went back and read the forward. Nicolson says she chose 1911 randomly. She was re-reading The Go Between, (one of my favorite novels) that takes place sometimes at the turn of the century during a hot summer, which inspired Atonement, and decided to write about a hot summer. So she researched and discovered that 1911 was very hot indeed. Seems a bit weird. But I think that’s how creative people work.

1911 was also a hot year in Quebec. Margaret writes in July: We have had awful heat. We slept out on the verandah. Took the mattresses. The Skinners (neighbours) did as well.” There were terrible forest fires in Ontario where Norman was posted on the railroad.

The next chapter is on the Ballets Russes. I’ve read a lot about them, in other contexts… biographies of Belle Epoque characters.

The Perfect Summer 1911 Juliet Nicolson

Image from a Corner in Wheat, D. W. Griffith, 1912

I just got the books “The Great Silence” and “The Perfect Summer” both by Juliet Nicolson in the post (I’m talking like a Brit now:)

Pretty pastel volumes which I could not wait to start reading.

Well, I’ve just read the first chapter of The Perfect Summer, 1911, and WOW it covers exactly the same territory as Tighsolas, except from the point of view of the rich and famous or soon to become famous. (And it has wonderful speeding prose, to illustrate the time it is talking about. Like the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities.)

And on the back cover, it is stated outright, that 1911 was a pivotal year in Western History. (In the second chapter, Nicolson relates that Winston Churchill wrote in a 1911 entry in his diary “Al the world is changing at once.”

I’m pleased, because I am not an historian, and I had little background in history, when I stumbled upon the Nicholson letters (belonging to my husband’s grandmother and great grandmother and father and written mostly in 1908 to 1913) and even though the Nicholsons were in no way famous, just middle class semi-rural Canadians of Scots origin, I realized that these letters were important, that there was something going on in the background. This was in 2004, three years before Juliet Nicolson (a grand daughter of Vita Sackville West and likely an Isle of Lewiser too, like my Nicholsons (who were once Nicolsons)…published her book The Perfect Summer. I posted the first version of Tighsolas in 2005 after educating myself about the era.

This book, The Perfect Summer, I can already tell, is a perfect complement to Tighsolas (http://www.tigholas.ca/) and when I get my novel Flo in the City written (based on the life of Flora Nicholson of Tighsolas) that book will serve as a perfect complement.

Funny thing. I have a diary belonging to another Great Aunt of my husband’s, Elizabeth Fair. Elizabeth was Douglas MacArthur’s first cousin and the daughter of a properous family in the South, Virginia, the Hardy’s. She went to Europe in 1911, London, Wales, Paris and kept a diary.

This diary proves that if you are an ‘airhead middling socialite’ and she pretty well was (sorry to state fact) than even if you are ‘in the right place at the right time” you miss everything. All she writes is about shopping and meeting other people of her class who all are “lovely.” Not ONE interesting item in the entire diary. And according to Nicolson, it was a wild summer in London. Well, my husband’s great aunt does witness a suffrage parade in London. Yes, , most diaries are dull and boring, but this one takes the cake. Considering where she was and when.

Oh, there is one scene of interest, she meets a man from back home in Virginia, who is coming out of the Venus de Milo room in the Louvre. Seems an odd coincidence. And if this were in a movie, like Room with a View, the scene would have significance. As it was, Elizabeth married a Montreal banker and lived in the luxurious Linton Apartments on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal until her death. She had no children, and left no money at her death, having spent it all on, well, not much.