From LJ Notices to Correspondents, December 2, 1854

Q. R. H.—Courtship is an indispensable preliminary to marriage. Sebastopol has to be taken by a regular siege. It is the same with that citadel—a woman’s heart. You must approach it in due form, and fire the big guns of big promises.

Here, the London Journal editor responds to a correspondent's query presumably about whether a period of courtship is necessary, with a timely reference to the Siege of Sebastopol that was, well, ongoing (September 1854 - September 1855), because the Russians did not wish to give up the Crimea. To translate: the peaceful-looking Victorian lady, pictured there in Charles Green's 1878 watercolor (titled appropriately "Courtship"), represents the Imperial Russian Army under attack by enormous British cannons, like this one:

by William Simpson

Sounds very romantic.

Summer Break Update 2

Illustrated London News at Alderman Library

In June, I attended a class at the Rare Book School at UVa. We (8 students and 1 professor) spent the week reading about and discussing the theory and practice of bibliographic description, textual criticism, and scholarly editing. We also practiced collation (side-by-side page/image comparison) using the Lindstrand Comparator, the Hinman collator, and electronic options like Juxta. The week was not so much a carefree gallimaufry summer camp as a diversely focused conference *on the purest crack* -- with obligatory attendance, no late entrances to sessions, healthy food at breakfast and breaks, and "electives" that included a talk on rare text preservation, a screening of a documentary about paper, a printing press demonstration, lunch-break visits to Special Collections, weeping in the Alderman Library stacks (OK, I'm probably the only RBS student who took that elective), and lots of used book store shopping.

I am eager to put this new, hard-won knowledge to work, both in the classroom (Literary Theory and Criticism this fall) and in my research (planning for a scholarly edition is under way).

Other fun events in June? I was invited to give a lecture for the local chapter of the Victorian Society for America. I presented a PowerPoint about Victorian matrimonial advertising, because the subject is fun, accessible, and makes people reconsider what they imagine was/is "conventional" in match-making and courtship then/now. A reporter and photographer from the Virginian Pilot were present, and the story was printed in last Sunday's paper.

Sewing projects:

Found some English home-dec fabric scraps at an old upholstery shop

There were enough scraps to make the doll a dress, too

Not a fantastic picture, but there you have it: we all match

The Summer Reading-for-Pleasure Project continues to be a challenge. I finished Maisie Dobbs in record time, really loving the development of the lady detective character and the suggestive inter-war English cultural history lessons. I picked up--and put down--and repicked--and reput (and so on) The Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao. I just cannot get into this story, although many of my most respected reader-friends recommend it. I was counseled to drop it for this summer, since it's defeating the purpose of the Project. I have also been trying to finish The Marriage Plot. I never got through Middlesex and I found The Virgin Suicides alienating in a too-frothy (do I mean precious?) way. I'm not sure Eugenides does it for me, but the premise here is too good to pass over. Mostly, though, it seems like a rip-off of Franny and Zooey. What am I ripping through because it's so over-the-top awesome? Marie Corelli's 1887 novel Thelma. It merits a post of its own.

Television: OMG this season of Master Chef features mean girls, pretty girls, vegetarian girls, and hipster girls. SO GOOD. At home, we are practicing our pasta-from-scratch, our eggs benedict, our cheesecake, and our sentimental background narratives about why we would make TV-candy competitors for when we go out for the show.

I also started watching Alias. It's Buffy without the camp; Lost without the brain-teasers. I object to the frequency of torture scenes, especially to the constant representation of Sydney-Bristow torture. But otherwise, the show is awesome through Season 3 (I just started Season 4: jury is out), and it motivates me to exercise my pout.

Banjo: I can now strum the alphabet song, and my daughter doesn't run away screaming in terror anymore. I feel pretty smug about this. This week I'm supposed to practice some basic frailing and learn "Good Night Ladies."

Pure Gold

Preliminary results from tonight's rushed research session conducted at another local university's better-stocked library (God bless them for having nineteenth-century British newspaper databases!):

HARPOCRATES.—Young and pure love is as bashful as bashful can be. Its language is sighs, furtive glances, blushes, and strange, but warm heart-flutterings. It is intuitive, and needs no interpreter. Love on; you are bathed in sunshine, if you only knew it. When the mystic time comes, your tongue will be loosened, and gallop fast enough.

J. N. solicits our advice upon a delicate subject. She says, a widower, about sixty, has paid his addresses to her for some time. He has no incumbrance, but has some cash. Therefore she asks, whether it would be an imprudent match, as she is but six-and-twenty, and considered handsome. Has our fair correspondent any other lover nearer her own age? And if she has not, does she entertain a suitable affection for the old gentleman? If she can answer these two plain questions satisfactorily to herself, and her ancient bean is of good moral character, we don’t see any very dreadful objection to the match. In these economizing days, competence with an old husband is preferable to poverty with a young one. But we must warn her that old husbands are horridly jealous of young wives, and apt to play the tyrant on every trivial occasion. In matrimony all violent disparities are avenged some way or another. Still we do not pronounce against the match. Men are scarce, women plentiful; and no woman ought to refuse an offer at all decent and prudent.

I think the clear disparity of tone is what I love most about these entries in the Notices to Correspondents section of an 1852 issue of the London Journal. To the dude, the editor is like, "keep cool and dulcet locution will follow; the girl is destined to comply" To the gal, the editor is like, "take the old guy--your choices are slim as it is."

Victorian Matrimonial Advertisements

The Wedding

I've been reading an article called "The Advertising System" from the Edinburgh Review (February 1843). The author's general complaint is that folks resort to all kinds of gimmicks, scams, and untruths to sell their products. Then he turns to matrimonial ads and, once again, Victorian England becomes totally fascinating from an anthropological perspective. Check it out:


'WANTED --A Young Lady, about 17 or 21 years of age, as a wife. She must be well acquainted with the necessary accomplishments of such; she must understand washing and ironing, baking bread, making good coffee, roasting beef, veal, &c., boiling a fowl, broiling a fish, making tarts, plum-puddings, and desserts of all kinds, preserving fruits and pickles, expert with the needle, keeping a clean and snug house; must know reading, writing, and arithmetic; never been in the habit of attending the ball-rooms; she must have been taught true and genuine principles of religion, and a member in a Church of good standing. She must not be addicted to making too free use of her tongue, such as repeating any report that is injurious to her neighbour; or using any taunting language to any person about her house. Any lady finding herself in possession of the above accomplishments, will please address to ALPHONSO. It will not be required that she should exercise all those requisites unless a change in fortune should take place, at which time it will be necessary, in order to live with such economy as to prevent a trespass on our friends, whose frowns and caprices we otherwise must endure, which every man of noble mind will despise. At present, she shall have a coach and four at her command, servants in abundance, a house furnished in the first modern style; shall always be treated with that tender affection which female delicacy requires, and nothing shall be wanting that will be necessary to contribute to her happiness.'

So let me get this straight: the young lady needs to be capable of drudgery in the off-chance that Alphonso loses his estate? And if his fortunes do go down the drain, does the tender affection that female delicacy requires go with them?


'RUN AWAY FROM PATRICK M'DALLAGH.-- Whereas my Wife, Mrs Bridget M'Dallagh, is again walked away with herself, and left me with her four small children, and her poor old blind mother, and nobody else to look after house and home, and, I hear, has taken up with Tim Guigan, the lame fiddler--the same that was put in the stocks last Easter for stealing Barday Doody's gamecock. --This is to give notice, that I will not pay for bite or sup on her, or his account to man or mortal, and that she had better never show the marks of her ten toes near my home again. PATRICK M'DALLAGH.
N.B. --Tim had better keep out of my sight.'

I'm so curious about the lame fiddler who steals gamecocks on Easter Sunday. Whatever did Bridget see in him?

'To be SOLD for Five Shillings, my WIFE JANE HEBBAND. She is stoutly built, stands firm on her posterns, and is sound wind and limb. She can sow and reap, hold a plough and drive a team, and would answer any stout able man that can hold a tight rein, for she is damned hardmouthed and headstrong; but, if properly managed, would either lead or drive as tame as a rabbit. She now and then, if not watched, will make a false step. Her husband parts with her because she is too much for him. --Enquire of the printer.
N.B. --All her body clothes will be given with her.'

I've been trying to come up with a comment about this one for the past eight hours. I think the ad pretty much says it all.