A Mute and Elegant Testimony

My pretty mother wore a grey vertical striped shirtwaist dress the day she brought my little brother home from the hospital.  As she knelt in front of us with her tender white bundle, the skirt of her dress ballooned over her knees like an upside down tulip.  I know this partly because I have a picture of that moment in time. It is no surprise that the dress became the most-requested for our birthdays when we each got to choose her outfit for one day.  It's also not hard to understand the special memory that plain and serviceable grey dress held.

But it also conveyed something about my mother and who she was at that time - a practical yet devoted young mother.  I would love to have that everyday dress and some other favorites that my mother wore and for that matter, some of my own dresses, long disappeared.

Augusta Roddis (that is her picture above) certainly understood that clothes have the power to speak to us about the past and that is perhaps why she saved, in her large Wisconsin home, more than a hundred years of family clothes.  The story of Augusta's extraordinary collection, American Style and Spirit - Fashions and Lives of the Roddis Family, 1850-1995, has captivated me and absorbed most of my winter reading time.

The text of the book engagingly gives evocative descriptions of dresses, hats, shoes and other accessories worn by the Roddis family for much of the 20th century.  The rich variety of items are complemented by photographs and letters indicating where the garments were worn and by receipts which indicate where the garments were bought.  It's a fascinating account of an interesting middle-class family that grew in wealth but somehow maintained humble middle class roots.

But this is not to say that the Roddis women were boring - the family often traveled and there was always a charity ball, wedding or party to attend.  The lovely part is that there are so many frocks and fripperies to commemorate each of these events.  The book is filled with photos of not only the clothes, but dress patterns (the Roddis women also sewed!), artifacts and supporting ephemera like ads from periodicals.  It is a spellbinding picture book with an engrossing true story to savor.

Sometime in her seventies, Augusta wrote a letter about what it was like to open trunks in the attic filled with a treasure trove of dresses amply adorned with embroidery and laces that once belonged to her grandmother. "There were her clothes, bearing mute but eloquent testimony...to her very discriminating, fastidious, elegant and feminine taste".  And isn't that exactly what our clothes do for us, whether we are in a ball gown or a plain shirtwaist - silently saying the things we cannot express?

If I were to find my mother's simple grey dress in a trunk today, I suspect it would transmit a wordless message from the past too - just as Augusta Roddis' collection does.

The Woman in the Glass

This ad for a designer faucet stopped me in my tracks.  I have felt this way most of my life. Well, at least since I first dipped into Little Women, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and the novels of Jane Austen.  The modern woman peering at an 18th century version of herself captured my imagination because I have often wondered what it would have been like to have lived in an earlier age.  My romantic notion of being a great heroine from one of my favorite books was later tempered when I matured and realized that most of the centuries I would have selected for myself were before central heating and indoor plumbing.

However, I am still entranced by trailing gowns, chaste courtships and love in other times.  A friend who knows some Hollywood types told me that Sense and Sensibility, the film production of Jane Austen's novel, is considered one of the most perfectly made movies and I agree.  The colors in the film, the images, the language and the loss and regain of love makes for a charming romantic escape to Georgian England.  Who wouldn't want to be Elinor Dashwood, the heroine who finally claims the heart of honorable and handsome Edward Ferrars?

I've discovered that my fancies have continued well into middle-age.  But now they manifest themselves in my desire to associate with courteous and genteel people who still keep their voices modulated when in public.  They manifest in the happy feeling I get when a little boy shyly holds a door open for me.  They manifest when I frequent shops where people are polite and make me feel welcomed.  And in the way I still care about dressing well.

As for love, gallantry in a relationship cannot be overstated.  The night my date helped me into my coat, my heart sang a song I hadn't heard in years.  If there were a puddle, I do believe he would have laid down his cloak for me.  Yes, I know the world is broken and far more complicated than the one the lass in the mirror faced.  And I know the past was not always what it seems to today's romantics.  Still, I reject overt cleavage, crassness, and vulgarity.  Instead, I seek out kind acts and perform as many as I can.  At times I feel like a dinosaur but I don't care.  The woman in my mirror keeps egging me on.

~

"The Woman in the Glass "

When you get what you want as your struggle for self
And the world makes you queen for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that woman has to say.

For it isn't your father or mother or husband
Whose judgement upon you must pass;
The person whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

She's the person to please, never mind all the rest,
For she's with you clear up to the end.
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the woman in the glass if your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life,
And get pats on your back as you pass.

But your final reward will be heartache and tears if you've cheated the woman in the glass.

~Dale Wimbrow

The Warner House

I dragged three unwitting participants with me to the Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire yesterday.  My goal was to see a bedspread.  Long on my unofficial bucket list was to view the Betsy Panhallow bedspread reproduced for this historic sea-faring house.  The beautiful coverlet first came to my attention via Piecework magazine in 1997.  It was recreated by a group of Portsmouth women based on Warner House letters and diaries written by some of the women that once lived there.  I had read that the Warner House had closed for the season a week or so ago but I called and asked if someone would give an afternoon tour to my companions and I and an enthusiastic and knowledgeable docent was dispatched to greet us and show off the house.

I was also particularly interested in the ethereal portrait of Polly Warner, above, age 11.  Many family members have occupied the Warner House from the 1700's to the 1930's, and it was difficult to keep track of the many ladies of the house so I am not quite sure who Polly was in the Warner lineage.  But she certainly captured my heart with her pet bird on a ribbon and her serene face. The painting was wall-sized and Polly peered deeply into my eyes as I stared back into hers.  She was painted by Joseph Blackburn, a famous English portraitist who excelled in painting women's lace sleeves and elaborate dress textiles.  He is especially well-known for capturing the beauty of shimmering silks, and was therefore, a favorite artist of fashionable women everywhere.  I was quite dismayed to learn that sweet Polly died at age 20 in childbirth.

The house is extremely livable in that it doesn't have the small low ceilings and narrow hallways one sees in early 18th century homes.  There was an airiness and expanse to the rooms and foyers and often I would glance down at the wooden floor boards and imagine the long sweep of a woman's skirt hem in flickering candlelight as she turned a corner from one of the many bedroom doorways that emptied into the large upstairs hall. 

Eventually I spotted the lovely cream bedspread and viewed up close and personal the level of craftsmanship that goes into making such a beautiful thing.  The knitting needles used must have been the very tiniest, the stitches so intricate and so abrupt in the turning and twisting pattern.  As a knitter, I cannot imagine the time it must have taken to create such perfection and loveliness. 

We moved onto the third floor where suddenly, my thoughts turned to Sara Crewe from The Little Princess and the cold attic existence she had to live when Miss Minchin banished her after Mr. Crewe was lost in the war.  The only interest in the blunt rooms were the string of brass and iron bells flanking the top of one wall, very much like the ones in Downton Abbey's opening credits.  It was clear, these frigid echoing rooms belonged to the servants.

I passed on climbing the curved and narrow stairs to the cupola, especially when I spied a bat's trap on the third step.  Two of our party climbed the claustrophobic passage and were rewarded with a stunning view of Portsmouth Harbor and environs.