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.

VERI OLD NEWS!

Ticket for Diamond Jubilee Exposition, August 20 to 28, 1897. Montreal. Nicholson Collection.

I thought I’d track down the story of this ticket I have in the “Nicholson Collection.” I’ve been thinking a bit about Royalty, what with the King’s Speech coming out.

My mother, a French Canadian, knew all about the British kings and queens, past and present, but I get all the Georges and Edwards and VII’s and X’s mixed up.

A few years ago, I was in a library at McGill, trying to track down the story of Edith Nicholson’s great love who died in a hotel fire in early May 1910 – and found out that the King (Edward VII) died at the same time, and the Montreal Star newspaper had a full section on that event.

Edith Nicholson, I’m sure, did not grieve with the rest of the loyal Colonials upon that sovereign’s death. Her pain was more personal.

Anyway, I was able to track down the story of this Diamond Jubilee Exposition, which was not a success, despite being blessed with good weather.

It had been postponed from an earlier date, due to some huge conflagration, and many farmers couldn’t get into town in late August to exhibit -or something to that effect.

It was not a special occasion anyway. An exposition was held every year (in the fashion of ‘the great industrial expositions’ worthy of ‘a great industrial city’ like Montreal, except it seems the city’s business elite “the prince merchants and others… did not come forward with enthusiasm.”

Well, Norman Nicholson attended: I have his ticket. I wonder if any tanners were exhibiting. In 1897, the year after he built TIGHSOLAS, Norman was still supplying hemlock bark to the tanning industry.

This 1897 Expo was merely dedicated to the Queen at the time of her Diamond Jubilee. (In other words, no special event was mounted, as in other Canadian cities. Apparently the Parliament Buildings were garlanded in lights.)

“At the opening of this Jubilee Exposition, it is appropriate for us to assure you of our highest appreciation of your labours in promoting and carrying out the memorial tribute of this city to her most gracious Majesty the Queen, whom we both love and revere.”

On the opening day of this “International” exposition, many exhibitors hadn’t yet bothered to set up their displays, it seems.

The President of the Montreal Exposition listed the names of the non-agricultural exhibitors in his opening speech: Christie Brown Biscuits; Bovril “everyone knows Bovril”; Karn Piano Company; Leeming Miles and Company pharmaceuticals; National Cash Register; the Canadian Rubber Company; American Dunlop Tire Company; Canadian Liquor Company; and other companies showcasing their metal ranges, hot water boilers, metal roofs, fire hoses… and of course, a number of local Textile companies, including Dominion Textile, exhibited. (Hmm, lots of metals, rubber and textiles: major UK exports of the era.)

There was also an exhibition of ‘ladies work.’

On the last day of the Exhibition, a Montreal alderman complained that one of the the textile companies were exhibiting unlabeled dry goods manufactured outside of Canada.

Or could it be that Montreal manufacturers were ashamed of their products, the left them unlabeled so that customers would suppose they were manufactured elsewhere.

Wilfried Laurier returned to Canada on the day the exhibition closed. He had been attending the Jubilee Celebrations in England and lobbying for a kind of free trade among Commonwealth Countries.

I guess Montreal had to wait until 1967 to get it right.

Other tidbits I found interesting in that 1897 newspaper: “Remarkable, if true.”X-rays it is said will show the bones in the bodies of people.

Also this one: “Veriscopes were being shown at the theatres. Just another name for early film. Wanna go see a Veri today? What’s that veri with Colin Firth, where he plays a stammering king who is only 2 years old right now? Could have been…

And among the many other entertainments advertised in the local fun houses, a show call Moulin Rouge. Hmm. I didn’t think the Moulin Rouge act was famous back then as it just a sleazy Montmartre show, featuring fallen women… I must be wrong. Must check it out.