Technology such as that of the Internet makes it very easy to share information, and people forget that such sharing is voluntary. Transactions regularly occur where the individuals involved are represented by little more than the numbers of their accounts, and websites like eBay make it commonplace to exchange large sums of money between people known to each other only by pseudonyms. Yet in a sort of interesting cultural foil to this, people very openly choose to post private opinions and pictures of themselves on public forums. Even opinions that can cause damage to careers or relationships if they are seen by unintended audiences, and photographs that can be compromising, are often willingly put out for general viewing. Perhaps the twenty-first-century phenomenon of Americans flinging private affairs out into public view can be traced to the fact that it has become easier for us to achieve privacy.
Like the Victorians, I have never felt any shame in showing my clean laundry, but neither am I in any rush to air the dirty variety. Correspondingly, I choose not to stare at the metaphorical dirty laundry of others. People sometimes believe I am hard of hearing, or somewhat stupid, because more and more frequently I show no acknowledgment of the rudest remarks. It is not that I do not perceive them; it is simply that I discipline myself to draw my veil against them.
Sharing information, Victorian-style: This fashion plate depicts one woman handing another her calling card. These were small, usually decorated, cards printed with a person’s name and possibly one or two other details such as which day of the week they accepted visitors at their home.
Calling card (late nineteenth century).
24
A Year On
Photograph of unidentified woman.
Over the winter, I kept in sporadic touch with the pleasant-faced woman whom I had met at the women’s suffrage event in Olympia. Mary Lee (we always spoke her name as one unit, as though her given and surnames were a joined piece) was immensely curious about our antique clothing collection, and in February we arranged an opportunity for her to view it. This simple afternoon of showing off was to blossom into quite a series of adventures.
We showed her all the treasures we had accumulated over years of saving and searching. (Most of them had been presents to each other on special occasions, such as anniversaries, birthdays, and Christmases.) She exclaimed over all of them, but was particularly taken by my mourning outfits. This rather surprised me, as I actually thought them to be my less impressive pieces. I had one in cotton and one in silk, and although they were nicely ruffled and tucked, they had always struck me as less pleasant than some of my other items, as they had been designed for bereavement. They showed off my figure to advantage, and I had done a passable job of making my repairs to them discreet, but still . . . They were entirely black, and not the sort of thing a young wife wears without some tragedy in her family. Mary Lee, however, loved them.
As soon as I’d taken the first one out of my cedar chest, she had stopped talking mid-sentence, and simply stared. She held the pose for an awed pause, and I wondered what she found so striking about the item. Finally, she spoke.
“There is a picture,” she explained, “of Susan B. Anthony wearing that exact dress!” I passed it to her with a smile, and she took it with the air of a devout accepting the Shroud of Turin. “The exact one!” She almost whispered, glory filling her features.
It wasn’t literally Susan B. Anthony’s dress, of course, but a great deal of mourning clothing was strikingly similar. (The nineteenth-century convention of special clothing during bereavement had actually started the custom of mass-produced, ready-to-wear clothing. It would have been unseemly to start sewing mourning clothes before a death, but after a relative’s demise, social convention required their instant appearance.) I was later to learn that Susan B. Anthony lost her favorite sister shortly before visiting the Washington Territory, so it was natural that she would have been photographed in black during her visit here. As part of this ensemble, she had worn a little black bonnet, and when Mary Lee saw my similar hat, she went into comparable raptures.
Gabriel and I had, by this point, seen a number of presentations alleging to be historical fashion displays. They had all fallen short of our high hopes, and many had promoted outright falsehoods. We wanted to give our own presentations promoting history, not erroneous stereotypes. We explained this desire to Mary Lee, and she agreed to help us. Thus, our adventures began.
Our first project was an appearance accompanying an exhibit opening at the state historical museum. Mary Lee helped us arrange the matter with the museum officials and specifically requested I wear what she called my “Susan B. Anthony outfit.” Gabriel spent a great deal of time choosing his own ensemble and finally settled on a suit contemporary with my dress. I knew that there would be questions about my corset, and so I revisited the letter I had written to Mairhe several months before and tweaked it into a general question-and-answer broadsheet to hand out to the curious.
I invited Mairhe to the event, as well as all my other friends. Gabriel and I grew increasingly giddy contemplating the event, and we awaited it with most eager anticipation. All our conversations seemed to come back to it; we were effervescent with excitement.
Determined to make a good showing of ourselves, we both started researching suffragists and women leaders of the nineteenth century. Gabriel, the MLIS librarian-in-training, provided fodder for these researches in the form of towering piles of texts from the University of Washington’s extensive library system. Early in my examinations of these venerable tomes, I turned a page and burst out laughing.
“Hmm?” Gabriel asked from the next room, where he was writing a paper. “What is it?”
I was laughing almost too hard to explain a coherent answer for my mirth. “Just come in here,” I invited between guffaws. “Take a look at this.”
“What is it?” Gabriel came over behind my seat at our table, looking around our tiny kitchen for something more worthy of such hilarity than the grim-faced photo in the dusty book before me. But that was exactly what had me laughing so hard. “What?”
“Just take a look at this!” I tilted the book toward him, starting to draw my chuckles under control.
“Yeah . . .” He recognized the picture, but he hadn’t caught on quite yet. “It’s Susan B. Anthony.”
“Yeah!” I agreed, my laughter renewing itself. “And what do you notice?” I pointed.
“She’s wearing a corset!” Gabriel smiled, starting to be affected by my merry amusement. “Of course she would be.”
Of course she would be.
It was true. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, nearly all Western women wore corsets. The knowledge did not diminish my amusement in the slightest.
“What do you think the really rabid, ‘corsets oppress women!’–style feminists would think if they bothered to notice that? They worship Susan B. Anthony! She’s like, the Supreme Deity to them! How could they possibly square her wearing a corset with all the nasty stereotypes they push about them?”
Susan B. Anthony (right).
Gabriel gave the question a slight, sideways shrug. “I think they just don’t understand what they’re seeing.”
“But it’s so obvious if you know what a corseted figure looks like!” I blurted.
“Well, yeah.” Gabriel tilted the picture, examining it. “But most people don’t. They just think, ‘Oh, people looked different back then.’”
“The women looked different because they were wearing corsets!”
“Oh, I know. It’s not like humans spontaneously evolved into drastically different creatures when corsets went out of style. But people don’t understand that.” He shrugged, handing me back the book. “You should copy it.”
Harriet Tubman.
Still amused, I went back to my reading. Later, when I came across a photo of Harriet Tubman wearing a corset, I cracked up even harder than I had over the Susan B. Anthony picture. I remembered Ellen’s desultory comment, which I had heard ignora
ntly reiterated so many times: “Fine for the women who had everything done for them!” Imagining that comment made about the woman in the picture before me, I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair.
By an interesting coincidence, the museum event was scheduled for the day after my birthday. This made it exactly one year and one day after my first experience with corsets. A year on, I privately took stock of my waisted year, which had been anything but a waste.
I had gone from a thirty-two-inch waist to a twenty-two-inch measurement around the outside of my corset. My shoulders never ached anymore, as they had on occasion from poor posture and the detriments of bras. My metabolism had increased: whereas I had long had difficulty motivating myself to physical exertion, now I disliked inactivity. My digestive system was functioning on a much more comfortable level, since I was taking more care with my meals and making them more balanced. I myself was more balanced, having learned the graceful steps of walking atop curved french heels. I had a wardrobe of pretty clothes and caring for them had taught me to be fastidious in all my habits, more particular care of my skin and hair among them. I had gone from grumbling to the world that I didn’t care about my looks while hypocritically hiding from mirrors to learning that there is no shame in being able to turn that glass into a sycophant. My head was high, and I enjoyed the admiration I saw directed at me. My thirtieth birthday, a cornerstone birthday, and a year on from my first corset, I understood that the gift I hadn’t wanted had transformed me into everything I had desired of myself.
Concerned over traffic, we left for Olympia quite early on the morning after my birthday and arrived hours before the museum opened. There was a small note on the main entrance instructing individuals with museum business outside the public hours of operation to approach through the back door. Following this advice, we soon found ourselves ushered inside, through what had been the old service entrance when the museum had been an upper-crust home.
The museum volunteer who had allowed us entrance glanced me over, from hair to heels. “Well! That is quite the outfit!”
I looked down at the very plain clothing I had made myself: white broadcloth blouse, gray wool skirt. She ain’t seen nothin’ yet, I thought privately. My amateur replicas could make no claims of skill when set against the antique garments Gabriel was carrying in a well-sealed garment bag. Wait until she sees—
“You must be dying in that!” the volunteer continued, breaking in on my thoughts.
“No.” I smiled as I shook my head. I had developed a good metaphor recently, and I was actually quite proud of it. “A corset’s just like a really good pair of shoes, really. A good pair of supportive shoes is the best thing in the world for your feet; but if you’d gone barefoot all your life and someone suddenly gave you a sturdy pair of hiking shoes, they’d seem like torture and you’d wonder why anyone would ever wear them. Once you’re used to them, though, they’re the most comfortable thing in the world and you wouldn’t want to give them up.”
She gave me the sort of cautious look usually reserved for bedlamites on day passes and quickly slipped down a side passage. I looked around to find where my husband had gone. The museum had originally been a private mansion, and it took a bit of wandering to locate him.
Once I had tracked down Gabriel, our next task was rather more difficult than finding our way through the complicated corridors: we had to get dressed. My own outfit was fairly straightforward, and in essence not dissimilar from what had, by this time, become my daily clothes. The main difference was simply that I had to be a bit more careful with the delicate old fabrics than with the sturdy newer clothing. Gabriel was the one who had a truly difficult task in front of him.
I was largely dressed and fussing with my shoes when a knock came lightly on the dressing room door.
“Can I just grab something really quick?” a soft voice asked.
“Oh, sure!” I called out, tightening a bootlace. I didn’t mind if another woman saw me with one stockinged foot.
“Wait!” The plea was voiced with an almost desperate intensity, and I looked over to see Gabriel in his shirtsleeves—and not much else. Victorian men didn’t wear what would be called underpants by modern standards.54
“Oh, wait, wait!” I called out, but the door was already opening. Gabriel ducked behind the table and I rushed in front of him, spreading my skirts as a screen. He gave me a slightly hurt look after the young woman had left the room, smirking. After all, I was the one who’d invited her in.
After Gabriel had managed to don trousers, collar, collar buttons, cuff links, waistcoat, tie, tiepin, watch (complete with chain and locket fob), glasses, shoes, bowler, and finally, gloves, we were at last ready to present ourselves to the public. I had already run out to the bathroom and back several times throughout his dressing, although I’d tried to be discreet about it. We made quite a respectable pair as we strode out into the drawing room of the old mansion, still slightly empty and with a hushed atmosphere.
As soon as the public started arriving, we found ourselves drawing a curious crowd, the way that perfume draws honeybees. Gabriel was a bit more at home amongst the buzz of queries, and I found myself largely hanging back, doing my shy best to look picturesque. My main concern was not to draw too much ire from the author who was signing a book on suffragettes, as she clearly did not seem happy about the large crowd flooding toward us and dwarfing the trickle of attention she was receiving at her book table.
This was our first experience with an event at which our presence had been formally invited, and that formality inspired an initial switch of attitudes, which I had not expected. Gabriel, usually the quieter half of us, dove into academic expostulation with the happy air of a seal hitting saltwater. I, on the other hand, was struck by timidity. I stood ready to answer any questions with cheerful profundity, but felt I was out of my depth when no questions came. It was merely our presence that had been requested, no presentation and no laid-out obligations. The lack of structure planted a strange discomfiture of idleness in me, which a straightforward task would not have done. Gabriel chatted away merrily with a trio of fascinated women who followed his every statement and tracked his every move, while the larger crowd surrounding them shifted in and out like the breath of a living creature; I lingered on the outskirts, wondering what to say and shyly blushing at the compliments of grandfathers who said I reminded them of heroines in stories.
I found myself rescued by the arrival of a dear friend. I had invited her to the event along with nearly my entire circle of acquaintances, but since she lived several hours away, I had not expected her to attend. It came as a delightful surprise when she walked through the door with her new husband.
Robin is one of those wonderful women with a personality like granite bedrock: she has a quiet dignity that holds calm and steady while all the more mercurial sediments are erupting into metamorphosis. Seeing her enter, I rushed over and embraced her comforting frame like a tide-swept swimmer clinging to dry rock.
“I’m so glad you could come!” I told her earnestly, probably with something in my tone of an earthquake refugee grasping at sturdy footing.
She must have sensed my bewilderment because she chuckled reassuringly. “Of course!” she said, taking in the situation with a grin. “No problem!”
With Robin and her husband to show around, I had the firm comfort of a concrete task. Leading them around the exhibit soon drew a crowd, and I was relieved when the questions finally came. Perhaps none of the other attendees had wanted to be first to address me as I stood apart in stark black (Mary Lee had specifically requested I wear my mourning outfit—or as she described it, my “Susan B. Anthony outfit”), or perhaps it was simply the subtle magnetism of my friend’s steady personality, but I soon found myself apologizing to Robin as she quietly withdrew with a grin, and I was left confidently addressing a crowded audience of questioners.
After a time, speeches were made about the exhibit, and we all withdrew to tea in the dining room. H
aving skipped lunch, I gobbled down tiny, sugar-dusted cakes between questions. One particularly sweet old man told me I reminded him of the women in his favorite Western stories, the mysterious woman who stepped off a train into town and always, always fell for the hero of the story.
An 1890 walking dress.
Near the end of the event, another old friend appeared, this one slightly more expected. Mairhe came in just as most of the event attendees were leaving, and she watched with a jovial amusement as the event wrapped up.
“Sorry I didn’t come earlier,” she apologized, explaining that she’d had to drop off her son. She retreated with me back to the dressing room as I changed from my delicate antique dress into my everyday clothes for the return trip home. As I undressed, she asked me a number of intelligent questions about corsets, still expressing her earlier curiosity. Mairhe had recently become pregnant with her second child, and we discussed the anatomical science behind the changes in a woman’s body from pregnancy versus the changes from corsetry. (The changes imposed by a laced form are actually far less dramatic than those caused by gestation.) I had removed my mourning dress and was stripped to my stays when the first museum docent from earlier walked in on us. She examined me with a critical look from hair to heels.
“You don’t really wear that all the time!” she stated emphatically, indicating the corset.
“Well, actually, I do,” I informed her, slightly irritated.
“Why would you do such awful things to your body?” Her tone was that of one addressing a lunatic found injecting depleted uranium with a nail gun.
Victorian Secrets Page 21
