Milk and Water

Crepeaus around 1927

Wellses around 1927

Well, as I let my first draft of Threshold Girl sit for a while, I got to researching Edith’s story, the Westmount Story.

But a bit in the Westmount News about a run away Laurentian Horse cart got to me thinking… I plan to write a story, Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, when there’s a typhoid epidemic.

I intend to cross the stories of my grandmother, Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services and my husband’s grandfather, Thomas Wells, President of Laurentian Spring.

I figured I’d write if AFTER I’ve finished the Tigsholas Trilogy…

Then, thanks to Andrew Collard’s book about Old Montreal, I found the link…David, the Prince of Wales.

I’ve figured out the plot and now all I have to do is a little more research… but not even that much.

I want to write it in the style of some of the Radio Four Afternoon Plays I’ve heard over the past 5 years.

I’ll write in in dramedy style… My grandfather and my husband’s grandfather are going to be thrown together and they’ll have a two solitudes style conversation, that will work on a couple of levels.

Domestic Goddesses and Hormonal Hysterics

Cover, 26 page promotional brochure for Ladies’ Home Journal.

In 1896 The Ladies’ Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper became the Ladies’ Home Journal.

Louisa Knapp Curtis, the editor understood that as the world became more and more complicated, some things had to be simplified.

Margaret Nicholson received this brochure, which is as crisp and clean as the day she got it, and wrote her name inside on the first page.

Now, the term Domestic Goddess is used jokingly today, but it is clear from the cover of this brochure, that it didn’t come out of nowhere.

Housewives and mothers of the middle class were often portrayed as goddesses at the turn of the twentieth century, in advertising especially.

In inside page reads: The Ladies’ Home Journal of 1897 will be, in every sense, a popular home magazine. (Positive thinking: already popular.)

It will interest and entertain, as do other periodicals, by the literary features. But it will go further than that. More particularly will it be helpful. (Then why remove “practical housekeeper?)

It will emphasize the practical side of life. It will appeal to the incomes of the many, not to the few.”

The following 20 or so pages describe the articles in the 1897 version.

1) An historical section about major events of the past century.. Jenny Lind at Castle garden; Mr. Beecher selling the slave girl Sarah at Plymouth Pulpit; when the Prince of Wales was in America.. “when a number of young women lost their senses in a frenzy of romantic excitement”

Hmm. With the wedding of Prince William and Kate next month, the US media will be pontificating ad nauseum upon the American fascination with British Royalty, making it a stultifyingly self-fulfilling prophesy.

According to this brochure, the Ladies’ Home Journal of 1897 will contain two more features on Royalty, a feature on how Queen Victoria spends Christmas (she would only have 3 or 4 more) and a feature on “the most popular man in the world” the Prince of Wales who would become Edward VII and lend his name to an era, the Tighsolas Era.

Margaret, Monarchist or Not?

The Nicholsons in around 1930, Margaret at top. She died in 1942 at age 86.

After seeing the King’s Speech yesterday, with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, I decided to try to find clippings of the event in the Nicholson stash. I know I had seen some years ago.

Let’s see: I have the entire front page of the Montreal Daily Star, January 21, 1936, that says Edward VIII is proclaimed King today. And the top half has two giant portraits of George V and Edward. A subhead reads “the King Dies in Midst of Family” which appears, from what I saw in the King’s Speech movie, a fib.

The blurb on Edward is written by Sir George Arthur the British Royal Biographer and appears to be a bit of damage control. “Edward VIII contradicts his appearance of impulsiveness and Impetuosity in Disposition…..King Edward is far too intelligent a patriot not to realize always that his capacity for doing good for is countrymen and fellowmen is infinitely greater than that of any of the comarades whose society he effects.”

Three other relevant clippings I found in my ‘quicksearch’ are related to the abdication. One a clipping from December 10, “Edward not going to Riviera.” Apparently, ‘strong police reinforcements’ were sent to Wallace Simpson’s villa as ‘she has received hundreds of threatening letters.’

The other clippings are the Text of Edward’s Message, of which a part is heard in the King’s Speech movie, two days later…on December 12th and the final clipping is ‘a Canadian angle on the abdication.”

News Hours Late in Reaching Ranch.

Press Query brought First Intimation of Abdication:

“Hired hands of Edward VIII’s EP Ranch in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains 90 miles from Calgary, heard nothing of the abdication until last night, nine hours after the announcement in the British Parliament.

Apparently, King Edward bought the rangch in 1919. It was a working ranch, a ‘ranch’ and not a ‘rawnch’ as he was said to have quipped.

So the workers there were out in the fields when the news broke.

He had been a popular prince, of course, and that fact is touched upon in the King’s Speech were Colin Firth as Bertie says the people are proclaiming God Save the King, and they don’t mean him.

Some people say there are citizens from out there back then who bare a strong resemblance to the Royals.

Odd, there are quite a few clippings about royalty and even “Britishness.” I wonder if Marg became a monarchist in her old age…

Maybe she was in 1908. When she goes to Quebec for the Tricentary celebrations, with the Prince of Wales (George V) in attendance, her sister writes. “Did you see the Prince? I know how much you love the Royals.” But I thought she was being ironic.