A Toy for All: The Automobile 1911

Edith’s Sister Flo (second on right) on an all girl trip in the twenties, I suspect.

One sunny afternoon, back in June, my husband and I took a car trip from our home near Hudson, Quebec to Richmond, in the Eastern Townships.

Nothing new: we drive to Richmond at least once a year to pay our respects to my husband’s  dearly departed laid to rest in St. Andrew’s  Presbyterian cemetery up on the hill, the place with the view pictured on the old orange Canadian two dollar bill.

This year, though, we tried something different.

We attempted to follow the same route my husband’s great aunt Edith took EXACTLY 100 years  before, which she enthusiastically described in an June, 1911 letter to her father.

“As you will see by the address, I am in Montreal. I came in with Dr. and Mrs. Skinner (next door neighbours) in the motor Friday. Left home at 10 am and got to Waterloo at 12.30. Had dinner.  Saw all we could of the town and left at 2pm for Montreal. Got here at quarter past six. Without one break down. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed every minute of it.

I will name the places we passed through so you will know the country we passed through. Melbourne, Flodden, Racine, Sawyerville, Warden, Waterloo, Granby, Abbotsford, St Caesar, Rougemont, Marieville, Chambly, Longueil, St. Lambert, Pointe St Charles.

Don’t you think I was a very fortunate girl to have such a trip?..PS I just loved driving on the smooth roads in the city.”

So I plotted the route out on Google Maps and my husband programmed the same route into his trusty GPS, and off we went, in our comfy Malibu and comfier modern stretchy clothing. But still, this was going to be a HISTORY lesson. I was determined.

I think it’s been decades since I took the Victoria (Jubilee) Bridge and I found it kind of scary, noisy and rickety-looking and all rusted to boot. But to get onto that venerable span (inaugurated in 1860 by the future King Edward VII who lent his name to the era that birthed the motorcar) we had to pass through remnants of industrial Montreal near the Lachine Canal and for that I was grateful. It got me into a Laurier Era mindset.

But within a few minutes the GPS landed us in bustling, box-store-pocked St. Hubert (right in front of, UGH, a HOOTERS).

So, after a short, heated ‘argument’ over how to proceed, we decided to forget the GPS and follow the silver church spires. Because they would be in the towns, right?  The strategy worked, for a time.  For instance, we saw a slew of charming waterfront heritage homes in old Chambly.

You know the song, “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road?” Well, after Chambly we had trouble telling which is which. So we just drove East on any road that wasn’t a superhighway.

Downer! Not much of a history lesson at all! The most interesting part of the drive was near the end, where we drove by FLODDEN (a field?) where my husband’s people, the Isle of Lewis Nicholsons, settled after landing in Quebec in 1851.

And where we passed a sign for Kingsbury, where my husband’s other people, the Isle of Lewis McLeod’s, settled in 1848.

Even in 1911, these farming villages weren’t  exactly bustling metropoli. They were losing all their young citizens to the towns, which, in turn, were losing many of their youth to the Big City or the West.

That’s why I have so many letters from the 1910 era – and due to the favourable date, the automobile figures largely in all these letters. You see, 1910 is when many middle class men, especially in the towns, decided they couldn’t live without a motorcar.

In an April 1909 letter, Margaret Macleod Nicholson, my husband’s great grandmother, remarks that  her  neighbour on the other side is going to buy a car.

“Mr. Montgomery is going to buy an auto. Nothing will satisfy now. He is going to sell his horse. Mrs. Montgomery does not want to buy one. Too bad he is so foolish, don’t you think?  

How strange, how restless men are. I suppose at one time he would think, if he only had a house in Richmond and could live comfortable, he would be happy (SIC).

Poor man, putting himself and everyone else in danger. I would have lots of money before I would want an auto.”

But soon Margaret learns that neighbours who have autos, or motors, or motorcars, are very useful, especially to take her down to the mail in rainy weather.

Margaret misses her husband and 3 grown children, who are all far away working and she longs for daily news of them.

Later in the summer of 1910, Margaret  loses her vehicular virginity. Edith refers to it in a letter. “I can just see you sitting in state waiting for your first ever car ride!”  No mention of who is taking her but it might very well be good family friend Mr. Wales.

The Richmond County Historical Society, in their book The Tread of Pioneers claims that Mr. Wales, the town tycoon, was the first to own an automobile in the era, obviously sometime before 1909.

But by 1911, the Delineator Magazine was slyly proclaiming “There are only two social classes these days, people who own an auto and people who do not.”

A linen duster coat, the magazine said, was now an essential piece of female apparel. An advertisement in the Richmond Times of 1911 reveals that the Wales general store sold motor suiting for coats and skirts in helio and navy stripe.

Car rides were a definite form of entertainment in the late Laurier era, for all the Nicholson women – and for most of the upper-middle class.  In 1910, Technical World Magazine declared the automobile “Our Billion Dollar Toy.”

Theatre owners blamed the auto for declining attendance.

The speed limit in Quebec, in the country, was 14 miles an hour, so I can  imagine how much fun Edith had in the back seat of, say, a Daimler,  flying up and down the picturesque green hills of Quebec’s Eastern Townships, holding onto her big BIG hat. Despite her tight corset. Despite the bumpy roads. Weeeee.

And imagine is all I can do, really, because I’ve discovered, you can’t  go back. Blame it on spandex  and independent front suspension.

Dorothy Nixon is a Vaudreuil-Dorion writer. Her latest word is Threshold Girl, www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

Who am I?

Marion Nicholson in 1912.

I used to have a recurring dream: I am walking downtown in barefeet and it does not feel nice or comfortable. It feels embarrassing or dangerous. I am often seeking a pair of shoes to wear and I can never find them or I don’t have the money to buy what I find…… I think these were anxiety dreams about finances, but also much more.

Pretty easy to deconstruct, this dream. Shoes are identity and I didn’t feel I had one. I still don’t to some degree, although I can’t remember the last time I had that dream (before I had a family)so that must mean something.

Today, I have only a few pairs of shoes at one time. This, apparently, is not the norm among women. Many women I know have a wardrobe filled with shoes. I suspect that the urge to have so many shoes is similar to my barefoot dream: a search for identity.

I write this because I just read the Introduction of Nan Enstad’s book Ladies of Labour: Girls of Adventure, about working class (mostly Italian and Jewish) girls at the turn of the century.

Virtually every paragraph has significance for my book in progress Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

Enstad tells of how these working class girls (working mostly in the textile industry) turned hierarchy on its head by refusing to wear sensible shoes and by dressing and acting above their station.

She discusses consumerism and feminism (my favourite subject) and suggests that the REALITY of women’s lives isn’t quite what the theorists suggest.

If being a passive consumer often entrenches the heirarchy in place (see the Ivory Soap ads on www.tighsolas.ca/page460.html.) these working class women often used ‘products’ to define their identities in their own way, sometimes to give themselves genuine power and sometimes to give themselves the illusion of power (fantasy).

Enstad even talks about the importance of hats to era women: she describes how a union leader makes a demand for hat racks for her workers. Why such a trivial demand? So the women’s hats won’t get trummeled. “They cost maybe only 50 cents, ” the union leader says, “but we value our hats too.” (Rough quote.) Remember, Edith and Marion paid 7.00 for their hats in 1909. (Enstad also mentions the movie The New York Hat.)

This is a kind of eureka moment for me because I tend to do the same thing.

Aside: You know the Toronto International Film Festival is happening now, and it’s all over the television, and, as much as I like film, it’s a party I am not invited to, (although nothing stops me from going to TO and buying a ticket to a film I would like to see, but I’d rather go to The Shaw Festival (and wine country.) Enstad talks about the dimestore novels that put ideas in working class women’s heads, or led them to fantasize about a ‘better’ life. Well, our cult of celebrity does the same thing. (Oh, Robert Redford’s movie, the Conspirator, seems interesting. Apparently the screenwriter conducted 15 years of research. I can respect that.)

A few years ago, when I stumbled upon a trunk full of letters written by my husband’s Isle of Lewis ancestors, I couldn’t help but read them..and I have spent the past 7 years researching background to them, posting a website about them, and writing this book (sic).

Why? Most people would have read a few letters, dismissed them as trivial women’s stuff, and perhaps consigned them to the recycle bin.

I recall showing these letters to a friend who told me “They sound so old fashioned.” But I was intrigued: the letters sounded very modern to me.

I think I understood, subconsciously,what Enstad is writing about. That Identity was being constructed in these letters: Canadian identity, female identity, middle class identity. So of course I related BIG TIME.

(Another aside: Yesterday, on the News, Hockey: A Musical was being reported on. The entertainment reporter said this movie featured a number of Canadian actors, Olivia Newton John…” Well, my husband was freaked when I yelled out at the TV “She’s not Canadian!!” (The reported corrected herself.) Why does this bother me, that a silly sounding l (likely crap) Canadian film puts a foreigner in a starring role and then describes the film as archetypally Canadian? Why does infotainment blather, in general, bother me, so much? OK. Now back to regular programming.)

That’s MY identity (despite the fact I never wore a shirtwaist and despite the fact I had no sisters and my mother was not at all like Margaret Nicholson being French Canadian and from a wealthy family.)

But no wonder I married my husband, the great grand child of Norman and Margaret Nicholson and the grandson of Marion Nicholson Blair, one time head of the Montreal Protestant Teachers’ Union, who fought for higher salaries and pensions for teachers, but died before earning a pension herself. (Marion was not a dreamer, she ACTED on the world like a MAN: Edith (like me) was half dreamer, half actor and Flora was a dreamer, the artist…. Hmmm. Three different degrees of femaleness.)

Ironically, my mother-in-law often spoke of Marion, her mom, but I never listened much. I recall my MIL telling me her ancestors were poor Highlanders (she was sitting at her 50′s style melamine kitchen table puffing on a cigarette) and I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

Yet, a few months after I met my husband, for some reason, he drove me down to the Eastern Townships to look at Tighsolas, then out of family hands.

The house was dilapidated and had no porch. (I was not impressed, but I was in love.)New owners have since restored the house’s dignity. It is lovely now and my husband and I have driven by a few times since 1985. Well, my mother in law in now buried there in the Cemetery there, up on the hill. With the Popes and Ewings and Dr. Henry Watters of Flo in the City. . And I likely will be there one day too.

Wings and Other Girly Things

Do it yourself millinery page, Eaton’s 1899

The ‘store books’ contain little mention of girly things: probably because any such purchases were incorporated into Margaret’s allowance.

A key story in Flo in the City, my book about a Canadian girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ is the story of Margaret’s Big Hat. I’ve written about it for a magazine. A Cautionary Tale

That story took place in 1909, when big hats were ‘explosing onto the scene’ which is why the story has relevance as an ‘historical’ essay. Miss Eugenie Hudon, town milliner was losing her best clients, the young, to the city. So she foisted these modern creations on the middle-aged woman who were staying behind. And like all older women, they felt uncomfortable in the latest fashions.

I have three bills from Hudon in 1898 and 1899. In account with Miss E. Hudon, dealer in the lastest novelties of Millinery and Children’s white wear. Ross Block (opposite St. Jacob’s Hotel) Main Street, Richmond, Quebec. Terms: Strictly cash.

1898..April 9.. 1 flat and veil…3.60

1899..April 22..Wing 35, Ribbon, 45, Work 25, Violets 20. Total 1.25.

June 8… repairing sailor 1.12, flower 45, 2 1/2 inch ribbon 45 work 25. Total 2.32

In 1911, Edith and Marion, both living in Montreal would go hat shopping at Ogilvy. Edith would buy a big black shape for 7.00 and Marion something smaller with pink rosettes, 6.50. Edith was a fashion horse, the big black shapes were all the rage, the Merry Widow Style.

FEATHERS AND WINGS AND WORRYING THINGS 30th installment

Marion in 1910 era. Old picture, but you can get a sense of the texture of her dress, cotton likely. A light material, surely, but that collar would drive me bananas. Boy, I am glad I came of age in the era of ‘danskin’ leotards.

“The Kelloch’s are still not very cordial to me. Avoid me if they can and the others act as if they do not like to be too friendly when they are around,” Margaret was telling Annie Waters over the phone. It was a night in early February.

“Still, the service Sunday night was very good, we had to have chairs in the aisles and the Dr. preached much better than in the morning.”

Flora was at work her hat. Her MacMillan’s Latin textbook was lying open on the chair seat. She was resting her mind, trying to focus exclusively on the slip stitch she was using to sew the braid onto the crinoline covering her hat form.

That was the second stage of the long process. Soon enough she could get to the best part, the trim, the decoration. For Christmas she had asked for some yellow feathers and red wings, like she had seen in the Eaton’s catalogue at Aunt Bella’s, one time when she was watching Stanley.

She had got a pair of orange wings and a red satin ribbon. Good enough. Bits and pieces of Margaret’s conversation from the hallway pierced her consciousness: “Mrs. Beiber’s solo was best I ever heard her sing and Dell Miller sang very nicely.On Sunday, Mrs. Angus Mc Bae sang in the morning. She has such a nice voice.”

cantas cantat cantamus cantatis cantant. Flora’s Latin Lesson flew into her mind, like a flock of etymological birds. Why now, when she was busy doing something else?

Cant: Boring talk filled with platitudes and cliches
Canticle: a song or a chant especially a hymn
Canto: Section of a poem
Chant: a phrase or slogan repeated rhythmically
Chanter: To sing in French

It was all there in her brain. So why couldn’t she repeat it back in class, or better at examination time? Her mind usually went blank then.

“Monday night we made 80 dollars at our tea,” her mother continued edifying Annie about her rather uneventful week.
“I received Edith’s letter and the lace. Took it to Miss B. today. She will try and have it done Saturday. I really cannot lengthen her skirt as the pacing is all pieced. But will let it out at the hips and give it a good pressing. Or we can get more cashmere and fix it all over… I heard from Herb in Cowansville. He says he has no time to go home. He is making me ill.”

Flora’s caught her breath and the orange feathers she had been fingering weighed, all of a sudden, like lead in her hands.

Herb.

Dream Factories of Another Kind

Edith and that silly hat. 1910 ish. How would you like your fashion faux pas’s immortalized on future blogs by some witless click-happy descendant?

Well, the Academy Award nominations came in this morning, and I was glad to see my favourite Colin Firth nominated for best actor (although like most of his fans, who are being cautious, methinks, I have yet to see his performance.) But I also love Jeff Bridges and as a good Canadian I want Up in the Air to do well. I saw it and enjoyed it. I also saw the Blind Side (enjoyable but I don’t think Bullock’s performance holds a candle to Streep’s in Julia and Julia) and An Education which is too arty and restrained for most people. I loved it, though. District Nine was so unHollywood I am freaked that it was even nominated.)

And then there’s James Cameron’s Avatar, which I haven’t yet seen because I can’t get into the theatre on Saturday nights.

Speaking of James Cameron, I’d like to slide into my topic here, on this blog entry, Hats and Big Hats and the Millinery Profession of Yore.

As I’ve written before on this blog, hats will never come back into fashion, because ‘hair’ is the new ‘hats.’ When those fashion-role models to us all, the resplendently bony actresses attending Oscar, parade the red carpet, stopping once in a while to spout nonsense to those obnoxious, obsequious (but necessary and rather parasitical or is it symbiotical) Infotainment hosts or hostesses, they will NOT be wearing hats. Even that actress who played Coco, in Coca before Chanel (if she attends) won’t be wearing a hat, despite the fact Coco Chanel started her career making hats (smaller) for her rich friends.

(If Princess Diana and Kate Winslet’s character in Titanic couldn’t bring hats back, no one ever will.)

Besides, hats cover hair and hair is a HUGE industry. Hats get caught on the top of car doors, too.

But the 1912 era was the era of the BIG HATS and in my next chapter of Flo in the City, my novel in progress about a young girl coming of age in the 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ , I will have Flora visit town Milliner Miss Eugenie Hudon to ask if she can work as an apprentice. And Miss Eugenie Hudon will burst her bubble. I have no idea if Hudon was a sweet and kind woman or a bitter business woman, or anything in between, but (as I wrote in an earlier blog) I will pattern her after this awful woman who once interviewed me for an advertising job.

I know Miss Hudon is a savvy business woman from the invoices for her business: “all accounts must be settled 30th of each month” and because of the famous hat incident involving Flo’s mother, Margaret, who, in 1909, was tricked into buying a big hat she didn’t want.

I have two interesting archival documents to draw from: one that discusses millinery as a career for women (in 1908) and says, basically, that the field is overcrowded, underpaid, ‘parasitical’ in that it employs girls who still live at home, for no one can live on 6 dollars a week outside the home.

But it is also the ‘glam’ job of the era. (Few women then (none, maybe)considered the movies (well, motion pictures) a glamourous profession, as they were very low rent and tarty.)

Millinery was GLAM because it was creative work, and clean work, as opposed to factory work, and a very few very lucky individuals (working for big department stores) made it BIG TIME, and earned up to 1,000 a year and travelled to New York and Paris.

Millinery, back then, was just like the acting profession today, one might say. Or the music profession, or pro sports, or the lottery -or, ahem, writing: BIG DREAMS sustained industry workers, who slogged on for little recognition and less pay.

Wanna buy a hat? A BIG one?

Above: Flo in 1908, likely at a Boston Beach.

(I am a bit FRUSTRATED this morning as it took me 30 minutes to scan the above picture from the Tighsolas 1900 photo album. It should have taken me 2 minutes. In the “good old days” it would have. But, have you noticed, the more advanced computers and their operating systems get,the harder it is to do the simplest things? My husband, Blair’s answer. “I guess you need to get a new computer.” My answer: “Leave well enough alone. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Upgrading just screws things up….. (Got THAT out of my system.)

“The girls in those days were more at home in a kitchen than in a drawing room. They did better execution at a tub than at a spinet; could handle a rolling pin better than a sketchbook. At a pinch they could even use a rake or fork to good purpose in a field or barn. Their finishing education was received at the country school along with their brothers. Of fashion books and milliners, few of them had experience.” from Country Life in the 30′s. Caniff Haight from Elementary English Composition.

I am working on Chapter 1. 1908. Just a Change of Colour for my book Flo in the City adapted from my Tighsolas website. I am focusing on this bit of text because I feel it would be good to start my novel by having Flora contemplate the historical past herself. HUGE changes happened between 1830 and 1910 just as HUGE changes have happened between 1910 and 2010. For one, the home went from being a center of ‘production’ to a center of ‘consumption’ – so girls were left without as much to do. (Still running a home in 1910 was a lot more complicated than running a house today.)

Well, what a great paragraph for Flo to ponder. Flo was never intended for finishing school; she was destined to be a teacher, the destiny of many a middle class woman with ‘iffy’ marriage prospects.

She did work around the house, for the Nicholsons had no maids. But it was her mother, Margaret, who had all the homely skills, baking and sewing and craftswork. Flo stoked the fire (an important thing to do -usually done by men, it seems) and ironed her dresses. That white dress Marion is wearing in the last blog, well, Flora had one as well and it took her two days to wash and iron it. I have one of the Tighsolas flat irons. I use it as a doorstop. I could use it as an exercise weight. It weighs about seven pounds. Think of it. This ‘frail’ little woman spent a day wielding that cumbersome hot iron over the wood stove!

Millinery? It was the ‘glam’ job for women in 1910. (The motion picture industry was only getting under way and it wasn’t considered a good thing for a woman to work within that industry.) Millinery was the custom design of hats for individual wear. Milliner’s working in the city at high end department stores could earn as much as 1000 a year! The starting salary for a female teacher with diploma was $500 in city schools.

But, wait, to be a milliner a girl had to endure a long upaid apprenticeship. So I will have Flo (who is failing school, remember) contemplating going down to Miss Eugenie Hudon’s shop on Main Road to ask to work as an apprentice. Just in case she fails at school. Either that or she’ll join the suffragettes!!