Not Happily Ever After

Mementos of the Marriage of Hugh Christian Blair and Marion Nicholson. Handmade – as their wedding was on the cheap.

Hmm. Mrs. H Blair. When a woman got married back then she not only gave up her surname, but also her first name. Officially speaking.

I have calling cards for Marion that say Mrs. H. C. Blair. These were likely used before her husband died in 1927. In her professional capacity, as a widow, she used the name Marion A. N. Blair.

Well, once again I went through the Nicholson memorabilia, looking for a certain document and found one I didn’t know I had: Marion and Hugh’s marriage contract. I had only guessed the date of the marriage, using an invoice for a wedding cake on October 9, 1913. Then I found these butterflies. Well, the Marriage Contract has the same date.

The contract is interesting in that it shows that Marion brought nothing to the marriage but her clothes and wedding gifts. (There’s a big space in the contract to list other things.)

Then it shows that Hugh promises to give all the household furnishings purchased from now on, to Marion, “as a simple celebration of the marriage”. And also to leave any insurance to her, UNLESS, there is a separation FOR ANY REASON and all this is deemed void.

I get the impression that this contract was forced on Hugh and Marion by his family, to protect them. She certainly gets nothing out of it.

As it happens, Hugh Blair died in 1927 after a lengthy illess. A liver issue. I have letters speaking of his illness. Edith writes that his eyes are as yellow as egg yolks. (I have stories told by my mother in law who was 10.) and I have documents supporting what she talked about.

Apparently, when Hugh was dying, Marion did everything to keep his family away, as she knew they would force him to sign away his share of the business. But she went out one day and they got him to do it.

I have two copies of a letter written by Hugh to Marion saying that this is only a temporary business decision and that she is still provided for.

Then I have a letter from Clayton Hill, the brother-in-a law stone mason, just before Hugh’s death, relating to the potential purchase of a plot for him in St. Andrew’s cemetery in Richmond. (Something made Hugh so angry he decided not to be buried with his family. Alas, he died too soon and is buried on Mount Royal.)

Then I have an obituary printed in the newspaper, that leaves out the names of Marion and family as mourners. (A letter Herb writes to Margaret asks about this.)

Then I have a letter from the Blair Bros. claiming that Hugh has exhausted all his insurance and that no money is due her.

Then I have a letter from a lawyer claiming that she has a good case against the firm but to pursue it would be too costly.

Then I have a letter from the Masons, the Melita Preceptory and Priory, saying that they are going to give her kids allowances from the Knight’s Templer Orphan fund.

And, yet, apparently she never complained. She just went back to work and rose to be the President of the PAPT union. And she got hell for this too, for her job, in many people’s eyes, was to get remarried and not get a job.

Had she been a man, there’s no end to what she might have accomplished.

Funny, I have a letter from her brother, Herb, 1907. Marion is teaching in Sherbrooke, he’s at the bank, working as a clerk. This is the year the Nicholsons are disinherited by a spinster Aunt who had a house and about 3,000 in the bank.

“And now that my house is to be given to someone else, ” he writes “I will have to give up all hopes of ever being rich and look at it as a lost fortune.”

He would spend the next few years getting into debt and making his family crazy with anxiety and it would be Marion on her teacher’s salary, who would bail him out, no thanks from him.

(This is the story told in the Nicholson Family Saga, on another blog.)

Sometimes I wonder if she got married because of a fear that she’d forever be bailing out her family, what with her brother being so irresponsible.

Largely because of Herb, Norman would have no money to give her ‘a proper wedding’ – so this mean little contract, I guess.

Hugh married Marion anyway, against his parent’s wishes. I also have a friendly warm letter from Hugh’s father, Hugh Purvis, to Hugh in June 1913, that never mentions Marion or the upcoming wedding.

Apparently, they didn’t attend the wedding. But, for the wedding, they did provide the couple with a Family Bible which I have on hand.

An Era of Optimism

A blurry picture, taken prior to 1912, as the old lady, Marion McLeod died in 1912. Might be Flo standing right, certainly is Marion, bottom.

Success! I found the Tighsolas book, with all expenses. But it did not contain any notes of stoves or furnace.

I have found everything I’m looking for. Now that I have finished the very first rough draft of the first chapter of Flo In the City, Just a Change of Colour. 2 days in early June. I introduce Flo and her anxieties, Margaret and her news clippings, and Marion and her strong, purposeful character.

Before I get to the next chapter, or while I write it, I want to re-read my letters, to pick out good lines that illustrate the times. In my last blog I wrote about a letter from 1904, Montreal, where a man runs into a new mother on Drummond and says her plans for the future are rather optimistic, considering that her husband is a mere book-keeper.

I think this is the type of thing that resonates: All young people, all new mothers are optimistic, but the 1900 era was an optimistic time, when young people thought the world was their oyster.

This story, Flo in the City (about a young woman coming of age in the pivotal 1908-1913 era of history and based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ will reveal how the middle class felt in 1900, and also hopefull explain the truth of it.

I also spent some time this afternoon going through the pile of invoices I have from the Nicholsons, most from either 1900 or the war era. I don’t know why this is. I assume the stores and the prices from 1900 were pretty much the same in 1910. There must have been some inflation during the war… I think I read as much in a letter.

Anyway, these invoices in themselves are a peek into the life of these people.

One thing I do want to resolve… why was flour so expensive, 4.75 to five dollars a barrel. This was the wheat boom era, after all.

The big Red Roses flour mill, an enormous eyeshore and iconic building on Montreal’s landscape, was built in 1912.

The Nicholsons bought Red Roses flour, at least sometimes.

Anyway, I have my work cut out for me. The title of the next chapter of Flo in the City. Maybe A Modern Conundrum. Why? Because today I dug out a book called Modern Conundrums from 1906 from the Nicholson collection. A conundrum is a puzzle (usually wordplay involved). The modern conundrum will be around womanhood. How to be a family woman and feminist.

Marion Nicholson figured it out, but at a price.

In the next chapter, Margaret comes home and announces that Edith is quitting her school and returning to Richmond. Is there a marriage in the offing? Apparently not. Edith goes to Montreal to work, very suddenly. Leaving Flo alone. But not before Flo and Mae go to Boston for a vacation, in August. And Margaret goes to Quebec for the Tercentenary celebrations, in July, and sees the Prince of Wales, who will soon become king.

Both Marion and Edith are tossed in love. Flora (sober-faced Flora as she is described in that 1904 letter) visits Henry Watters, bachelor cousin, who is a successful doctor in Boston. Henry is everything brother Herb is not, very successful and very attentive to kin. I have an earlier letter where a sister discusses how Margaret had wanted Herb to be a doctor. Instead he works at the bank, in Montreal. “He will be President one day,” the sister says. She also says she assumes he is ‘a ladies man.’

Well, Herb never became bank President. Far from it. And if he was a ladies man, he NEVER wrote about his loves to his mother. His life was a big secret. He was always in debt. I think I will have him visit prostitutes on de Bullion Street of Montreal. In the first chapter Mae brings up deBullion street. So I will have it that Flo told Mae how she overhead Marion tell Margaret that Herb has been hanging around de Bullion, where the prostitutes are.. Something like that. In an earlier blog I wrote about an article in a 1906 Ladies Home Journal that dealt with the double standard around sex, that a young man was expected to get some experience somewhere, but a woman had to remain pure. The very word pure says it all, right?

Marion will have heard rumours, from a friend of a friend. Maybe that dentistry student Flo has talked about..Somewhere in the letters are descriptions of a woman relation who appears to be a fallen woman.. someone visits her and says “she is worse than ever” . I should read that letter more carefully.