Supper, Lunch, Dinner and Tea! Oh My!

Suffragette parade 1913. Still wearing big hats.

The third series of Upstairs Downstairs arrived, tossed onto my driveway yesterday and I watched 4 episodes, as I continue to research Flo in the City.

This series starts in April 1912, for Mrs. Bellamy goes down with the Titanic. Plunk in the middle of the Tighsolas era!

Like in Downton Abbey, the hats shown are smaller and more restrained. So I went online and saw that average women, like the suffragettes, were still wearing big hats in 1913. And so was Queen Alexandra. But smaller hats were making an appearance.

In the first scene of the first episode, Mrs. Bellamy is having tea and the writers go out of the way to ‘explain’ what tea is, the drink with a pastry of some sort, crumpets or buttered cakes. Something to hold you to the late evening formal meal.

Breakfast, dinner supper tea.. it all gets a bit confusing.

I searched for every mention of ‘tea’ in the Nicholson letters, and can confirm that ‘tea’ meant the late day meal. “I had dinner at Mr. Cleveland’s and also stayed for tea.”

This was the general gist.

So dinner for the Nicholsons is what we call “lunch.”

Tea was what we called in my family “Supper” since we no longer take late evening meals like on the Continent.

Supper is mentioned occasionally in the letters, rarely actually. Herb uses it to mean “tea”…late afternoon early evening meal, around six o’clock.

Marion uses it to mean LATE meal.. I went to dance and we had a supper.

I think that’s how it is.

With most men, heads of the family, coming home at 6, that’s when people in North America started having ‘suppers’ and not teas, at that time.

In my home, it was breakfast, lunch and supper. I only recently learned that ‘dinner’ is supposed to mean the main meal of the day, whenever it is.

With all the modern conveniences, women could prepare suppers by 6.

It is clear in Upstairs Downstairs that the servants had long days. They cooked, served and cleaned up the late meal, the dinner, and then ate a meal for themselves. Luncheon meant a formal mid day meal.

Anyway, this series of Upstairs Downstairs introduces a middle class character, Hazel, a secretary, and she causes a stir…upsets the apple cart, so to speak.

Neither downstairs or upstairs respects her, except as a secretary, as they don’t know where she fits in. James woos here and she gets the blame.

Since James Bellamy marries her, the rest of the series deals with this.

Hazel’s middle class mother isn’t impressed. As Richard Bellamy says, the Middle Class is more prudish than the Upper. And my letters prove it.

Lunch is mentioned only a few times in theNicholson letters and refers to a midday meal. Lunch at the Windsor.

Hmm. I looked online for definitions of lunch, dinner, supper and tea ..and in England it is claimed that people who have breakfast, dinner and tea, like the Nicholsons, as their three daily meals, are almost certainly working class in origin.

A supper is an ‘informal’ late day meal, by one definition. In our house it was the BIG late meal, but at six when Dad came home. A la American. Dinner is really supposed to be a formal meal at night… in England.

In NA it’s the BIG meal of the day, whenever.

It’s easy to see all the confusion over the title of meals, reflecting the changing social life, work life, and eating habits over the century and the difference between UK and N A society.

In this environment, if Queen E extends youan invitation to ‘dinner’ might prove very embarrassing when you show up at the wrong time. But then your social secretary should help you avoid any confusion.

The Tighsolas Era as Reflected in Downton Abbey

Harper’s Bazar image 1913

I watched the 7 episodes of Downton Abbey all at once, a 2010 British mini-series that takes place between the Titanic and the Onset of WWI, starring Hugh Bonneville (who was so good as the Dad in Lost in Austen) and Maggie Smith.

In Lost in Austen Bonneville had all the droll lines and delivered them with aplomb, this time Maggie Smith has all the potentially funny lines and nails them, each and every one.

Well, Downton Abbey is a cross bewtween a Jane Austen Novel (about marriage prospects and entailments) and Upstairs Downstairs, and is written by the screenwriter of Gosford Park.

It’s a bit Soap Opera-like then, but just a touch. In period pieces the fashions are the star and here is no exception, although the fashions worn by the younger women in Downton Abbey are a tad twenties-ish – at least I think. I suppose that means they are supposed to be cutting edge, but those v-necks during the day seem wrong.

The pic above is from Harper’s Bazar, 1913, so it was a coming trend.

And to save money, I guess, the producers of Downton Abbey show lots of autos, not many horse-drawn carts and carriages. The streets of the small Yorkshire? town near the Abbey tend to be empty most of the time, not chock-full of activity as was the case, I imagine.

In this Downton Abbey miniseries there are three girls competing for husbands and they appear weight conscious, but in a contemporary way.

I thought of this, because the Nicholson girls were certainly weight conscious, but not exactly in the way we are today. Mother Margaret worried when Flora was too thin, and exulted when she gained weight at Macdonald. With weight came ‘colour’ which meant she was healthier and less likely to die from La Grippe, as so many did.

Edith gives her weight as 138 (in her clothes I guess as she weighed herself at a store). She does not say she is fat. (She was about 5 foot 5 inches.)

Marion’s weight Yo Yo’s. She too gives her weight, at 19, as 130 pounds. She’s 5 foot 2. In 1912, she is under great stress and loses a lot of weigth, everyone comments. This is not considered a good thing.

Maybe there was more pressure of the wealthy to be thin, even then, before the First World War, but I don’t think so. Full-figured women were still desirable, if not going out of fashion. Adele Blood was deemed “the most beautiful blond on the stage” and she was more Mae West than Kate Hepburn. In fact, my own grandmother had a similar build.

Remember, that skinny twenties look was called ‘the garconne’ as in the female boy. So they believed thin women looked ‘boyish.’ Today, all actresses are ballerina thin, but they are not seen as boyish at all.

Today,there are few plump young actresses, if any at all. Taboo.

Many reasons have been given for this trend, which tracks against real life, where everyone is getting fatter and fatter. Some feminists believe, the more power women have, the less female fat they are allowed to have. I suspect it has to do with an invention back in the 1900/1910 era, the motion picture. Skinny women look better on film, their faces anyway, and the body followed

Anyway, I liked Downton Abbey a lot, (I watched all 7 hours at one sitting). My only problem, in retrospect, is the one pivotal scene, a seducation scene that seems more of a rape scene. It happens to the eldest daughter just hours after she meets a handsome exotic stranger. I can’t quite figure it out in relation to the very prudish 1910 era.

And at the end a miscarriage happens because the Mom, played by Elizabeth McGovern, falls coming out the bath. From what I know, such things don’t happen, baby is well-protected in these cases.

Having just watched the first two series of Upstairs Downstairs (and Gosford Park!) it was fun to compare. There is a clearer line between the good servants and the bad servants in Downton Abbey than in U/D.

The cooks are similar. The young maids and footman are similar. (My Yorkshire grandfather was a footman, supposedly, before being shot off to Malaya, because an Earl’s daughter fell for him. Footman had to be tall and presentable, it seems, so they were bound to attract female attention, despite their lowly position in life. )

The Butler and Housekeeper are not as pivotal -or as captivating- in Downton Abbey as in U/D, but similar.

In the opening scene, when Hugh Bonneville’s character learns about the sinking of the Titanic, his thoughts immediately go to the steerage passengers, who he assumes, (correctly) have mostly drowned. This is to show, right away, that he is a good sort. He says,”Poor souls, travelling to make a better life,” he says. Ironic statment, since from I can see from the 1911 Canadian Census, many of these young Englishman and women were going to work as domestics in Canadian homes, since there was a dire shorthage of help and English people were preferred over all others. So instead of working in an elegant home, they get to be Jack and Jill of all servant trades for middle class people like the Clevelands,in a Victorian townhouse on Lorne Avenue. They employed a young English girl fresh from overseas.

Adele Blood. Flora sees her in 1912, in Everywoman. I will include this in Flo in the City, my book about Middle Class Canadians in 1910. The Nicholsons had no maids, but lots of upper class pretentions, all the same.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King.

A monkey and Ma Mere, Old Orchard Beach Maine, probably 1925, as my mother there is about 3, I’d say. My grandfather, Jules Crepeau, was in is professional prime, Director of Services, for Montreal.

The roarin’ twenties.

I’ve finished off the 2nd series of Upstairs Downstairs and I seem to recall the final scene on the balcony when the King Edward VII dies. And I’ve ordered the next set which will only arrive end of May.
May 1910 was when Edward VII left this realm.

I know, not because I looked it up on the Net. Years ago, when I first found the Nicholson letters, I travelled to McGill to check out the Gazette and Montreal Star newspaper archives.

I was looking for news about a fire in a hotel in Cornwall, because Edith’s ‘fiance’ died in one.

I think I found a notice, but most of the newspaper was taken up by news of the King’s death – and about the Horse Show.

I was woefully ignorant about the Kings and Queens of England, although I took British History in school, as we all did. And passed.

I didn’t like or dislike history class.

But I didn’t take a history course in College, except for History of Art.

Now, I realize everything is history, except, perhaps, Science Fiction and Math.
(My father, an Oxford taught mathematician, said ‘everything is mathematics.’ )

Anyway, the royal nuptials are coming up. Soon. But so is an election, which is actually getting exciting toward the end. And Vancouver made the next round in the playoffs and Montreal will, if the team wins tonight. (They’ve closed the street around the Molson Center to traffic, in the case of ahh..either case, I guess.)

Who has time for Royal Nuptials. And no Royal will look handsome now that Colin Firth has played George VI. Not to me anyway.

Good luck to Will and Kate (sounds like a sitcom). Good luck to any newlywed couple about to live their life under the microscope.

I’m very happy, because I’m working on the DEFINITIVE draft of Flo in the City. I’m not posting it as I hope to get it published in hard copy form. I then have plans to make a sequel using Marion’s life and then Edith’s..all covering the same 1911-1913 period.

Suffragettes and Iconic Mini Series’

Suffragettes throwing flour at Asquith’s auto.. from Pankhurst’s bio.

I watched almost all of series two of the old Masterpiece Theatre series Upstairs Downstairs yesterday, it being a very rainy day (although I got my dahlias in, don’t I sound like Mrs. Dalloway who lived in Belgravia, am I right?) Anyway, yes, it does appear that that iconic series got to the Tighsolas era before I did…

The last episode I watched was about the daughter Elizabeth and the Suffragettes. Now, I likely didn’t see this episode in 72 (although I may have.) I was in CEGEP then, and not likely watching much tv. And, remember, in those days, families tended to have only one tv and the dad commandeered it at night.

My husband remembers the series, however. His Mom watched it and he took it in on some level.

Anyway, it’s interesting for me to see that episode. Upstairs Downstairs did not have a huge budget .. that is obvious. So the producers and other artists had to be creative. The scenes with the suffragettes were stylized… Only a handful of women gather at Eaton Place and head out to break windows and vandalize a politician’s home.

Rose tries to stop Elizabeth but can’t, then follows her and gets put in prison.
And force fed..

There’s a prostitute among the women, a noblewoman, a woman of the educated middle class etc and they are not particularly nice to each other in jail.

So the suffragettes are not portrayed too sympathetically here… although as per usual excellent research was done. (But had I seen these series I would have learned that the term suffragette refers to the militant brand.)

I did post, earlier on, an article about the British Suffragettes (Margaret Nicholson mentions them in a letter and I find the event she is talking about). The article does say the woman arrested represent all stratas of society.

…I got an email from someone commenting negatively on a post about a Maclean’s article from 1910 about the negro. The person said I shouldn’t quote things out of context. Hmm. This entire blog is about the context of 1910, and contains an awful lot about immigration policy, the eugenics and purity movement. My goal is to get into the head of Marion Nicolson, a prim and proper Presbyterian, who happens to get a job in a school that has black students. Her letters reflect little of her feelings about her students. I have to research the ideas of the time. The fact that so many of these ideas have been censored, or at least not repeated in history books for the masses, is important. Indeed, a commentator in the New York Times wrote a similar article but a few months ago.. he perused 1911 articles from the New York Times about immigration to explore era attitudes about race and ethnicity. He remarked on how the Powers that Be liked to stereotype different ethnic groups with respect to personality and character. In his mind, they did this is similar fashion to the way the American Kennel Club describes different dog breeds.

Upstairs Downstairs touches upon the racism in the era, but only lightly. Their purview is class prejudice.

Lady Bellamy is a nice enough woman and a clothes horse, but she is not much into social reform…as some wives of MPS were. Indeed, Mrs. Snowden, a suffragist Edith heard speak in 1913, was the wife of an MP, a Philip Snowden who went on to get a very key position . I can’t recall, now, which one.. I read it in the book The Thirties: An intimate history..

Both Maid and Hostess

Flora

I am writing my final draft of Flo in the City, putting it all together and I reread this bit from the 1912 letters. Flora writing to her sisters in Boston.

This is the only letter I have from Flora to her sisters, and it contains a bit of candid information. She didn’t enjoy some visitors. It was hard work. As I am also watching Upstairs Downstairs, this bit is particularly relevant. She was middle class so when people visited, she was both ‘maid’ and ‘hostess’.

The middle class Nicholsons were neither Upstairs or Downstairs. They were In Between Stairs.

“We got card from Mrs. Cleveland saying that they expect to arrive in Quebec on Monday so that means some work for us. I would just as soon have the King come as Dr. C of course “he ain’t a going to be any trouble” but from now on you can think of us scraping out all the corners, carrying newspapers to the attic, making lemon pies, etc besides “a talking to him in between times.” Mrs. Cross from Mt and Mrs. Skinner are coming over for tea tomorrow night. Be sure and send Mrs. Dr. Skinner a card. Mrs. Cross was saying today she has been very sick in fact, they all have been. Now I must gang awa is ma wee bed so good night.”

Your Pard,
Florrie Anderseed

Deja Vu In Between Stairs

I have finished watching the first series of Upstairs Downstairs that takes place between 1903 and 1909. I’ve already ordered he next set.

Like my Tighsolas story, the first series ends in a wedding. And as befits the 1910 era, hats are at center stage during this scene.

The original Upstairs Downstairs shows how to produce a period piece without a huge budget. There are no establishing shots, no outdoor sets to speak of, save the outside of the home in Belgravia and the outside of this church where the wedding takes place. Few wide shots either.

Furniture takes the place of setting (like on stage)…tables and chairs.

Writing and acting take center stage and there’s a great deal of attention to historical detail.

And the costumes are impeccable, as well.

At the wedding a servant is wearing a ludicrous hat covered in cherries (which are meant to be real, I imagine. Lady Bellamy is wearing a breathtaking work of art on her head as she reflects the epitome of good taste (in a rather tasteless time) and there are all kinds of hats in between reflecting the personalities and levels of taste in between. Bellamy’s society friend has just too many roses perched upon her hat, but ladies did that.

Now, of course, you can turn to YouTube to see real people in the era’s hats and movies of the time.

The researchers for the original Upstairs Downstairs didn’t have the Internet, but they did have real Edwardians to talk to. Edith and Flora Nicholson, for instance, were still alive and no doubt they watched this scene and remembered their own big hats. Edith always wore a hat to church, my husband remembers, even when they were no longer in fashion.

Now, after 5 years of researching the Tighsolas era on my own (without having seen Upstairs Downstairs.. I could have just ordered the tape at any time this past decade)it’s like deja vu all over again.

There’s even a short allusion to the eugenics movement in the scene with the daughter’s bohemian friends.

Tighsolas is neither Upstairs or Downstairs. It is IN BETWEEN Stairs.. The Nicholsons are middle class and as I have been told, letters written by middle class women and preserved are rare.

Now, I didn’t see this series because in 1972 to 77 I was at school, the one time in my life I watched no TV. I had better things to do. No doubt I saw a few episodes and I certainly heard all about it. Indeed, my introduction to the term Edwardian Period was likely because of that show.

The daughter in the first series is 21, and that would have been a bit older than me. They played up the New Woman aspect of the era through her – no doubt to appeal to young female viewers like me. I certainly would have identified with her.

1971, forty years ago. There are quite a few references to homosexuality in this series, quite adventurous for a series in 1971, I would think.

I also think the respresentation of female sexuality was pretty well bang on. With respect to sex. Kissing was considered risque behavior and prudishness crossed the class lines, although the daughter mentions the bedroom activities of the upper class marrieds during her Scottish visit.

Upstairs Downstairs 1903-2011

I’ve just watched the second episode of the new Masterpiece Theatre Upstairs Downstairs, as well as the first four episodes of the original.

I bought the first series of the classic series off Amazon.ca, and it takes place in 1903-08, the beginning of the Tighsolas era.

Right away, I was pleased to see a dressing scene in the maid’s quarters. In Flo in the City, I describe Flo getting dressed. Now I can see it for myself.

I don’t recall seeing Upstairs Downstairs, but it’s hard to tell. It is so iconic that you don’t have to see it to ‘have seen it.’

I recall the Forsythe Saga, (I recall this scene if the baby Fleur) and Duchess of Duke Street…and I Claudius.

Upstairs Downstairs started in 1971. I was in 10th grade. The other years I was in college and university.

Still, it’s very likely I watched the show. And I am pretty certain Flo and Edie did, from Tighsolas. (If they could get PBS…hmm.) And then they probably thought back to their lives in 1905 and 1908 (perhaps remembering that upstairs in the attic was a trunk full of era letters). And they probably joked about having no servants..how they were their own servants. Well, we all know where they were and what they were doing in the Edwardian Era before the war.

As they watched the maid, played by Pauine Collins secure her stockings with garters, perhaps they discussed when they changed over to garter belts (which were just going out of style thanks to pantyhose). I doubt that at 88 Edith had changed to pantyhose. Pantyhose is still problematic for very old women.

When they heard about the coal stoves, they probably thought back to the wood stove, that was in Tighsolas for a long long time. They might have discussed how in 1910, the more modern stoves where both coal and wood.

The cool thing about the old Upstairs Downstairs is that it makes reference to technological changes happening. The cinema, the auto. Incidently.

Anyway, I will purchase the next series, 1908 and beyond to further study the era. I realize the show’s real strength is its acting. Still stand out after all these years.

I also watched an HBO programme about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on the anniversary of the history-changing evcnt. I was taken by how beautiful all the victims were, even their descendants.

Jewish and Italian.

In Montreal, French Canadians also worked in the factories.

Upstairs Downstairs -Then and Now

Eileen Atkins and Jean Marsh in the new Upstairs Downstairs. I watched the first episode of the new Masterpiece Theatre Upstairs Downstairs Sunday night and it was a very fine thing.

And it takes place in the 1930′s so the set designers and dress designers had a spree. (I am renovating a bathroom and I just drooled over a bit of deco bathroom.) And it is set this time in the same era as the King’s Speech. And it feels a lot like Gosford Park. And the format is perfect for showing how the BIG PICTURE, the political, impacts on the SMALL PICTURE, the personal, my main aim with Flo in the City.

I liked this new Upstairs Downstairs so much I immediately went on Amazon and purchased the original, its been so long since I saw it. My husband surprised me. He doesn’t know his Brideshead from his I Claudius (He’s more a Shogun kind of guy) but he walked into the room when the TV had a head shot of Jean Marsh and said, “She was in the original.” His mom watched Upstairs Downstairs.

Anyway, I might have missed out on all this fun except for an article in Salon.com. Someone was lamenting the American fascination with the class system. “Haven’t we got past this yet?” she asked. ( I stopped reading her article because I quickly went to the PBS site to see when the miniseries was playing.)

But I’ll answer her anyway: No. You are deluded if you think there is no class system in America. Maybe we don’t have accents, but… And statistics reveal that here in NA we’re getting pretty close to Edwardian style feudalism, with a tiny proportion of people holding most of the wealth. (Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper is building prisons instead of poor houses for the hoi poloi, but…there you go.)

(Now, in my previous blog, I remarked upon how I live a similar lifestyle to people in West London, despite my home being worth much much much much less. That is, I am of the same class, essentially. My interests, education, even lifestyle. But there have always been anomalies in the class system.)

Of course, all this business about the servant class fits in beautifully with Flo in the City. In 1910, as I’ve written they had ‘a servant problem.’ And when Flora Nicholson attended Macdonald Teachers’ College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue in 1911, many of her fellow female students were studying domestic science. It was an institution originally set up to train men as farmers and women as domestics.

I am reading The Thirties: An Intimate History on my Kindle, which is another reason I am so pleased to have discovered Upstairs Downstairs.

I am only 13 percent into the book (says my digital slate) but it is clear that in the UK in the 30′s, with rampant unemployement, the Powers that Be thought that unemployed women (from textile factories in the north, etc.) should be trained as domestics. This first episode of Upstairs Downstairs was about the difficulty of finding good help in the 1930′s in England.

I’m not sure this happened in Canada during the Depression.

My mother’s French Canadian family, in the 30s in Montreal was well off, but they didn’t have maids although my grandmother often took in ‘troubled girls’ the nuns couldn’t handle…

My anglo father in law, however, had a cook and a maid and they were upper middle class, I’d say. They lived on Tupper near the Montreal Forum and later on Chesterfield in Westmount. A maiden aunt, Emily, was his nanny of sorts. (She was not poor, she left 50 thousand at her death.)

I don’t know who these maids were, but I do know that after the war Caribbean women were brought in to work as domestics, even if they had professional credentials. This was the same in England. The book Small Island is about just that.

And today wealthier people hire Philippino women to take care of their children and our elderly. So to say there is nothing for us to learn from the past, how ridiculous!!