Myrtle Ashdown
lived in Victorian England in Surrey, a wife who dutifully obeyed and supported
her husband Gilbert Ashdown, and a mother, moral adviser and guide to her only
daughter Josephine. Her husband Gilbert was a cold, private man who worked all
hours and often left Myrtle lonely. For 10 years Myrtle yearned for a child and
after copious failed pregnancies when Myrtle had almost lost hope and all
feeling she learnt she was pregnant with Josephine. Josephine; her daughter,
companion and best friend, was so precious and longed for by Myrtle. Myrtle
experienced 14 years of intense happiness and fulfilment with her until
Josephine contracted the lung disease Tuberculosis, a disease which killed 1 in
4 Victorians. Myrtle nursed her and prayed that Josephine would survive the
cough, night sweats, weight loss and appetite loss. After 6 weeks, Josephine
died early one morning in her mother’s arms. In an era where death was highly
visible, she became yet another woman cocooned in crape mourning clothes. She
adorned her neck with hair jewellery and had a post-mortem photograph taken of
her daughter. Just seven months after Josephine’s death, her husband died of
old age. Alone and feeling nothing but numbness and darkness she projected this
blackness to the world, wearing her black mourning clothes for the rest of her long life.
Tuesday 4 December 2012
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria's funeral, 1901 |
Queen Victoria had a major influence on mourning rituals during the Victorian era. After her husband Prince Albert’s death from Typhoid in 1861, Queen Victoria went into mourning and remained in mourning for the 40 years left of her life. Society followed their Queens’ example and elaborate mourning rituals became the norm. In “Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion” Rappaport describes how her “unceasing ritualization of mourning” meant “the queen would raise herself as an archetype of sober Victorian widowhood”. She was the widow in which all widows would emulate. She stayed in seclusion, rarely appearing in public, which widows copied. For the first year after her husband’s death during first mourning, Myrtle remained in her home except for visits to church. Mourning consumed and took precedence of Queen Victoria’s time just like Victorian widows in society. Myrtle had heard rumours that Queen Victoria left everything as her husband had left it. She wore black mourning clothes for the rest of her life and whilst in full mourning for three years after his death she clothed her staff entirely in black too. Wealthy households imitated this, dressing servants in black. Like Victoria, Myrtle and fellow Victorian widows clothed themselves in black mourning clothes in the first stage of mourning which lasted a year and one day. Queen Victoria spent the 40 years left of her life commemorating him, for example getting statues made of him. This resulted in a trend for mourning memorabilia such as hair jewellery, which Myrtle along with many grieving women commissioned. Jillian Bost notes that “the public grew tired of their queen’s refusal to be seen in public, and her deep mourning that kept her from them.” Queen Victoria realized she owed it to her people to engage in the royal spectacle they yearned for. This reintroduction into society and normality and the ending of secluded mourning was also echoed in mourning etiquette as Myrtle undertook half mourning easing back into colour, social events and more elaborate jewelry and fabrics, after completing a year in full mourning and three to six months in second mourning. Myrtle idolized Queen Victoria and felt an affinity with her as she had experienced heart wrenching loss like herself.
Victorian Mourning Rituals
Mourning
rituals of the Victorian era included elaborate graves, expensive funerals,
withdrawing from society, wearing black mourning clothes, and adorning oneself
with memorabilia of the deceased. Elizabeth Wilson states the mourning ritual
was not “conspicuous consumption” instead, it expressed “both the deep
seriousness of the Victorian evangelical sensibility and the generalized
hysteria of the culture”. In an era where the middle class population was large
and increasingly affluent, with life expectancy rising, Wilson notes “the
particular emphasis on mourning throughout the nineteenth century may have been
because death at any age was no longer taken for granted”. Myrtle and Gilbert
could afford children and death was not expected, instead they had hopes of a full
life for their daughter. Myrtle embraced all the mourning rituals expected of
her, hoping they would cure and lessen the pain she felt from the loss of her
daughter and her husband. Unlike Myrtle, some were more skeptical of mourning
rituals. Jalland describes how a Victorian doctor Keith Norman MacDonald wrote
a pamphlet in 1875 on “Death and how to Divest it of its Terrors” in which he
“rejected the wearing of mourning-dress as a “silly custom” which “adds to the
embaressments’ of mourners”. Jalland also notes that Victorian
novelists such as Charles Dickens, “tended to ridicule extremes in mourning etiquette,
enhancing the impression that widows were motivated more often by social
emulation, convention and vanity than genuine sorrow”.
Myrtle's Hair Jewellery
Only a Curl
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I.
FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea,
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand
Held up to be looked at by me, —
II.
While you ask me to ponder and say
What a father and mother can do,
With the bright fellow-locks put away
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay
Where the violets press nearer than you.
III.
Shall I speak like a poet, or run
Into weak woman's tears for relief ?
Oh, children ! — I never lost one, —
Yet my arm 's round my own little son,
And Love knows the secret of Grief.
IV.
And I feel what it must be and is,
When God draws a new angel so
Through the house of a man up to His,
With a murmur of music, you miss,
And a rapture of light, you forgo.
V.
How you think, staring on at the door,
Where the face of your angel flashed in,
That its brightness, familiar before,
Burns off from you ever the more
For the dark of your sorrow and sin.
VI.
God lent him and takes him,' you sigh ;
— Nay, there let me break with your pain :
God 's generous in giving, say I, —
And the thing which He gives, I deny
That He ever can take back again.
VII.
He gives what He gives. I appeal
To all who bear babes — in the hour
When the veil of the body we feel
Rent round us, — while torments reveal
The motherhood's advent in power,
VIII.
And the babe cries ! — has each of us known
By apocalypse (God being there
Full in nature) the child is our own,
Life of life, love of love, moan of moan,
Through all changes, all times, everywhere.
IX.
He 's ours and for ever. Believe,
O father ! — O mother, look back
To the first love's assurance. To give
Means with God not to tempt or deceive
With a cup thrust in Benjamin's sack.
X.
He gives what He gives. Be content !
He resumes nothing given, — be sure !
God lend ? Where the usurers lent
In His temple, indignant He went
And scourged away all those impure.
XI.
He lends not ; but gives to the end,
As He loves to the end. If it seem
That He draws back a gift, comprehend
'Tis to add to it rather, — amend,
And finish it up to your dream, —
XII.
Or keep, — as a mother will toys
Too costly, though given by herself,
Till the room shall be stiller from noise,
And the children more fit for such joys,
Kept over their heads on the shelf.
XIII.
So look up, friends ! you, who indeed
Have possessed in your house a sweet piece
Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need
Be more earnest than others are,—speed
Where they loiter, persist where they cease.
XIV.
You know how one angel smiles there.
Then weep not. 'Tis easy for you
To be drawn by a single gold hair
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair
To the safe place above us. Adieu.
Myrtle got out her poetry book
entitled ‘Last Poems, 1862’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a popular Victorian
poet, finding solace in ‘Only A Curl’. Just like Myrtle, the bereaved mother
has lost a child and cherishes one curl of his hair as a memento. In the poem Galia
Ofek deduces that the ‘curl’ is the only ‘physical presence of the departed’
and a ‘powerful spiritual connection between the living mother and her dead
child’. Barrett Browning conveys that the lock of hair should not be allowed to
become a symbol of their eternal and final separation, but rather ‘an image of
almost divine or mystical unity between the dead and the living, a vibrant
spiritual cord which ties the two worlds’ and two people together. Pamela
A.Milller claims ‘jewellery had been made from hair or had incorporated hair
for centuries but it was the Victorians who turned mourning and sentimental
jewelry into a true industry’. Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey reasons ‘Human
material that was regarded as ‘dead’ while the person was living, is thus
transformed into a ‘living’ substance at death in the sense that it is
reanimated as a possession capable of sustaining the deceased in close
proximity to the bereaved. The physical durability of hair makes this possible
as it stands in stark contrast to the instabilities of the fleshy body.” It is
the only body part that endures so is therefore precious. Myrtle’s locket was a
physical memorial and combined with mourning clothing, made death highly
visible in Victorian culture. The locket is made of jet, a form of fossilized
wood. Jet was one of the only forms of jewelry permitted to be worn under the
strict Victorian code of mourning, particularly during half mourning. Inside
the locket there are three small pearls which symbolize tears. The design of
the hair is fluid and curvaceous. The curves and form suggest movement and are
dynamic denoting life. Shapes of solid
colour created by multiple strands of hair contrast single strands delicately
arranged, creating depth within the locket. The jagged edge of the jet locket
juxtaposes the smooth form of the hair encased inside. A thin piece of glass
separates Myrtle from the hair in the locket, much like her daughter whom she
can no longer hold. The oval shape of the locket echoes the pearls and could be
interpreted as one large tear. Today, society’s attitudes towards hair has
changed. Physical reminders such as hair jewellery are not worn and are often
viewed as macabre and distasteful.
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