A drawing from Light in Dark Corners, ‘Scxual Hygiene’ Manual from 1896. This is where you end up without self-control. (That is unless your parents can pull strings for you -as in the case of Herbert Nicholson.)
When Norman Nicholson, of Tighsolas, died in 1922, the Richmond Times Guardian described him in his obituary as “one of the most respected persons of this place.”
Here is a man who had struggled for two decades financially; whose only son had stole from the bank in 1910 and was forced to move out West; whose wife and daughters were outspoken ‘new women’ who loved finery and supported the militant suffragettes and who lived independent lives in the city.
The book Light in Dark Corners, published in 1896, was a leading sex hygiene book of the era, but it contained little of what we know as sex education.
It was a primer on Middle Class Protestant morality.
It was about the over-riding importance of ‘self-control’ and maintaining a good name; it elevates tribalism, the primitive, instinctiveness need to be accepted by ‘the group’ to a pre-eminent virtue – so consequently it creates an aura of evil around other groups. Oddly, the book invokes the ancient Greeks a whole lot, while looking down upon modern Greek Immigrants and their like as too animalistic. (Or implying that the southern races have little self-control.)
“The longing for a good name is one of those laws of nature that were passed down for the soul and written down within to urge toward a life of action and away from small or wicked action. So in studying that life motive which is called a ‘good name’ we must ask the large human race to tell us the true nature of this spiritual longing.
It is amazing how many people are willing to sell out their reputation and amazing at what a low price they will make the painful exchange…. Our prisons are filled to overflowing with those who took no thought of honor…. If integrity were made the pride of government, the pride of it would spring up among the people…No young man or young woman can by industry of care reach an enimence in study, or art or character without the blessing the family group…We look at the utter wretchedness of the men who threw away reputation and would rather be rich criminals in exile…Young and old cannot afford to bear the burden of an empty or evil name..”
This is all very interesting in the context of Flo in the City, or Tighsolas. Remember, everyone knew everyone else’s business in small towns and it was no different in Richmond, Quebec. And, yet, in the letters, there are hints of ‘nasty business’ barely spoken hovering over the town, at the personal and political level.
(As well as open matter widely judged. In a letter mentioning a man who has left his wife for another Margaret says it would be better for him to just jump in the Salmon River.)
Herb stole from the bank, and even the family patron, E.W. Tobin, MP, couldn’t help the Nicholsons out. But, at the same time, the family’s good social standing kept him from going to jail.
Yes, it was all covered up. Probably one of dozens of such stories unfolding in Richmond at the time. I suppose if any of the girls got pregnant, it too would have been covered up. The girl in question would have taken a long trip…Women hid their pregnancies, anyway, respectable married women that is, until the 5th month or so…
So this book explains the subtext of all the worries about Herb in the 1908-1913 letters. On the surface though, they never held him in account. In later days they talked of his problems as boyish mistakes.
They had too. They couldn’t see themselves as creating a criminal. In their mind, criminality was caused by bad parenting or by bad genes.
Ps. The Nicholsons were basically broke, but I have to wonder how much respect they would have maintained had they lost Tigholas, their lovely brick house in the good part of town. They held on to the house, despite all, I believe because it represented their respectability. Marion and Herbert appeared the only members of the family who didn’t care if the house was sold. But they also didn’t care too much about reputation…
As for real, nuts and bolts, sex education.. Hey that fits, right?… the Methodists, apparently, were for teaching the details, to keep kids from learning the stuff at the knee of a servant or on the street. (They felt this would prevent women from ‘falling into sin’ and prevent married women from getting social diseases.)The Presbyterians were less open about teaching clinical sex. So I imagine the girls didn’t know much. I sort of have proof. In 1914, when Marion is pregnant with her first, Flo complains that she is left out of all the talk about the pregnancy, because she is unmarried and “supposed to know nothing.”
