Twins Separated at Birth?

Here is a picture of Marietta Holley's fictional alter-ego, Samantha, aka "Josiah Allen's Wife", from the frontispiece of Samantha Among the Brethren (1890). Note the substance of her figure (she gives her weight as "two hundred and 4 pounds" -- citing the number so that Josiah will stop trying to call her "a little angel"). Observe the stalwart bosom, the small eyes boring through tiny round spectacles, the no-nonsense coiffure.

Now get a load of Mary Watson Mahaffy, my great-great grandmother, in a portrait taken about the same time:

According to family lore, Mary Mahaffy was a kind, gregarious sort of person, even if she didn't believe in smiling for photographs. Her son, Dick, was a rabid photography enthusiast, so maybe she was unimpressed by cameras.

The Brick House was her married home. She helped run her husband's woolen mill, kept dairy cows, raised four kids, took care of extended family, played the organ at the Methodist church, and took part in several ladies' clubs. She was born in Dewitt, New York in 1854, the first child of her family born in America. She died in Pulaski on January 22, 1920. Here is a letter she wrote to Dick in 1917. I found it in the same packet as the two letters from Yates, posted earlier, and I have liberally added punctuation, which I feel is my prerogative as a blood relation:

My Dear Boy

I tried all last week to write to you and thought sure I would get time today, but everyone been here all day so there has not been any chance. Perhaps I can get a chance to write tonight while I am waiting on milk customers. I have thought of you many times and am glad you have kept well. I was afraid you would sure get the Influenza. There is a lot of it here, yet everything closed up here. Quite a few deaths -- not so many as there are in some places. I will be glad when it is over with. We have kept well so far Nell and Orson and Fred has had it but quite light but hard enough. The last I heard from Yates he was back to work. He wrote last Tuesday. Thought sure I would hear from him today but did not – he has a new address. It is battery D. 4^th Regiment I.A.R.D. No one knows what I have been through for more than a month thinking of you two boys of course I worried more over Yates as I knew he was where he could not get home and it would take me as long to get to him after they knew he was sick. It is his first time he has been away from home. When he was home he would never say one word about feeling sick but keep right on working until he would almost drop in his tracks.

Uncle Will don’t get along at all. I guess they have about given up thinking he will get up. Of course he has some good days, then he gets down again, don’t sit up any only while his bed is being made. There they have to hurry. Aunt Helene keeps about so -- don’t get much better, gets up in the morning and sits by the stove all day. Does not do much of any thing. Uncle Will does nearly everything. Carrie Lane goes over nearly every day and helps, and Belle Mates and the girls, but the girls can’t do much with their babies. It makes Aunt Helen nervous having children around. Aunt Kate can’t get over very often -- her hands are full. I have been up once but if I walk up there and work and walk back I am all in. I can’t go up there until after dinner any way because of milk customers coming. They don’t want anyone to go there and stay so it is hard telling what to do there is nothing to do with where any one goes there.

Winter will soon be here and I dread it. I will have to stay in then. I don’t get away very much now but I can get out doors and we go up to Hell’s to dinner every Sunday now, and she says we must as long as I can get up there

I hope you will not have to get into the war any more than you are now. I do wish this war would come to an end soon as though it must. I will finish this letter now. I waited thinking perhaps I would get some word from Yates then I would write what he had to say but did not hear from him and will not now until tomorrow

I must try to write to Drusilla this week but I have been so nervous I could not settle down to write Want to write to Aunt Hattie. Must any way this week

Orson is working up in Watertown and getting good wages and thinks soon he will stay there all winter.

Your father is busy all the time carding every one wants yarn but can’t get it only by making it so when they have a little wool or can get some they have it carded and make their own yarn your father can’t get any anywhere would sell a lot of it if he could get it.

It is near dinner time and there is not much more news to write that would interest you so will quit at this time hoping you keep well and never have to go in the war only as you are now. I will say goodbye write when you can if only a card. I know you do not have time to write but a card is better than nothing.

With lots of love from all your loving

Mother

Birds and Bees

Now, to get this blog back on track, let's talk about something really sexy. Here is the sexiest topic around, sexier than, say, Rupert Friend as Chéri. Sexier than Mr. Darcy. Sexier than Jemaine Clement's lips.

Oh yeah, you KNOW what I'm talking about.

VICTORIAN GRAPHIC DESIGN.

Here are some high Victorian book spines to titillate (the 5 on the right are Marietta Holley titles). Oh, the typefaces. And the botanical gew gaws, and the gilding, and the curlicues, and the embossing. These are the elements that make you want to curl up with a book -- and not just curl up, but shack up on a velvet fainting couch with a paisley shawl about your shoulders and a cashmere turban in your hair. With fringe.

Modernist graphic design is sterile by comparison. There is no there there -- no flowers, no filigree, no engraving, no birds, and no bees.

Get a load of this tissue I found in one of the Holley novels. Technically, it is a "Japanese handkerchief", a durable piece of ephemera:

(Unfortunately it doesn't smell any more, except of old paper, but that's an appealing aroma too.)

Even these funeral cards have a joie de vivre to them, an exuberance of detail, a fineness of texture (the white designs are embossed):

(Note to hip urban families out there: a black border signifies mourning. Please do not attempt to send black-framed photos of your kids out this Christmas, or you may cause undue panic in the family.)

Stark modern design rejected ornamentation as a distraction. How short sighted. Is there any better way to go?