Burn This Letter- A Tribute to Mothers on Mother’s Day

Probably from September 1917..Marion Blair and kids

I have decided where to start Biology and Ambition the story of Marion Blair in the 1910 era, the follow up toThreshold Girl about sister Flora and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster about sister Edith (all part of a big volume called School Marms and Suffragettes.)

I will start it with this war time letter from her husband. 

He is home in Montreal  being watched over by his sister in laws, Flo and Edith. He is not happy.Marion is with her mother in Richmond with her babies very likely. Flora is a teacher, so not at work and Edith is at this time, I believe, working for Sun Life Insurance. And there’s a lot of war work, volunteering.

I’m guessing Marion, with two young kids, is in no rush to get home to Westmount.  I have other era letters than say the house gets hot…and there’s fresh veggies and butter at Richmond. In another earlier letter Marion is telling her mother about all the local gardens cropping up in Westmount and she sort of mocks the city folk, who she suggests have no idea what they are doing.

It’s getting towards the end of the war her. In two months Edith and Marion will be visiting their friends the Tuckers in Montreal who learn they have lost their son Percy. Then they learn he is alive. Then they learn he is dead. I don’t think they felt sorry for Hugh. Married men didn’t have to go to war in Canada. Hugh would be about 40 anyway.

July 26, 1918

Hugh to Marion

My dearest sweetheart,

I cannot express in writing how pleased I was to hear your voice over the telephone a little while ago and was very sorry when I learned that due to the circumstances, you were not able to come home…Dearest, I have never written you on this strain since I have known you and before I say what I have in mind, I beg of you to please try and understand it in the light that I mean it.

For Marion, dear, I love you with all my heart and it is because of my affection for you that I try to pave the way a little. I honestly, would not intentionally hurt you Marion. 

Now sweetest, here it is: You know, Dear, that you have left me alone at different times for indefinite periods, but may I say that I have never yet found one month to be as long as this one. 

Really, it has seemed to me almost like years. I would a thousand times rather be left entirely alone than to be left again with the girls, as I cannot get them to do anything which appears to me to be reasonable.

 I have come home on several occasions and the front and back doors were not locked. They will not close the windows and the house is almost like an oven. They forget to order food. The refrigerator is left open; the ice is melting as fast as you can put it in. 

Cawlice. (French swear word, euphemism for chalice)

Water is running all over the floor and things are lying about. I am sick and tired of the whole place.

 Take pity on me Darling before I go crazy and come home to me to look after and love me. *but under no circumstances take chances (with mother’s health). 

 Take it from me, God help the poor man that gets either one of them, if they don’t change. You can do more in five minutes than they can do together in a day. You have forgotten more than they’ll ever know. 

God bless you Marion and may it be God’s will that he can spare you to me for many long happy years.

Lovingly,
Hughie,

PS. Don’t fail to burn this when finished reading.

And, Now, A Word about War

Franz Ferdinand Funeral.

I’m writing this Flo in the City novel, based on the letters of http://www.tigsholas.ca/ as a kind of rebuke of history as it is taught traditionally. You know, as if it is all about powerful men, wars and treaties.

Why can’t fashion be a part of history as much as any other subject?

Why don’t women count in history?

The Tighsolas years are 1908-1913, six years when the great changes happened in the Western World.

The Nicholsons of Richmond, as it happens, were experiencing their own saga at that time, so I have 300 family letters to use as fodder for my novel.

But it can’t be forgotten that these are pre-war years. That in 1914, when Marion is married and about to drop her first child, and Flo is working at her school in Griffintown, and living with Marion and Hugh in Notre Dame de Grace. war breaks out.

You know, as I’ve always remembered it from History Class, WWI began because of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand… The pic above is from a little YouTube video about the Great War that suggests the same.

Yet, as I searched through era magazines, looking for articles about women’s social history, housekeeping, courtship and the motion picture shows, etc. I found a number of articles that predicted a coming war. And I was surprised.

The following is from Maclean’s, 1912 from La Revue. This article claims overpopulation is going to bring on a war. And this ties in with a key theme of Flo in the City: immigration to Canada. The article is called The Next Great War.

Sociologists view with some alarm the enormous growth in population growth in different countries. The most prolific countries, Germany among the number, are fast becoming a common danger for the peace of the world. In the last century, Germany’s population has trebled, yet her emigration has always been considerable. In the century, she provided the US with over six million immigrants, and in addition a goodly number of Germans have settled in other distant lands. At the same time, her economic prosperity hs been extraordinary. another source of danger for the the world. Not only is Germany obliged to allow large numbers of her population to emigrate, but under pain of ruin she is compelled at all costs to find markets for her surplus production…. Even in the United States, the plethora of people is felt. Hitherto the steppes of the Far West seemed to offer indefinitely work to the pioneers of civilization, but there are now indications that the space available for the ever increasing tide of humanity is giving out. Only this year, 100,000 farmers of the West emigrated to Canada, where there is still room and to spare. Comparing the density of population per square mile of various countries, we see that in Canada there are only two inhabitants to the square mile; in South America there are 7; in the US there are
30, in teh Philippines 69; in Germany 303; in Japan 315…War is standing at our doors and is, perhaps, only waiting for an opportune moment to break out.