I’m currently reading American Home Life, 1880-1930 : A Social History of Spaces and Services edited by Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth. The book came out of a conference on “home history” – the formal historical study of the home. The first chapter was a fascinating look at the parlor in American homes. OK, I’m at that point where histories of parlors interest me intensely. It has something to do with that family history bug.
So let me take a moment to reveal my process, which is being specialized, and of which I am quite proud. For each book I read I take a fresh sheet of notebook paper and then tear it into little strips to mark pages. When I finish the book I summarize it in a Word doc based on all those strips of paper – maybe something 5-9 pages long depending on the book (so I can return the book to the library). Then I have my notes and quotes for whenever I get to that section.
My initial intention was to recycle all those strips of paper for subsequent reads but that’s just one step of hassle I can’t seem to make. Also, it took me a sec to catch on to the strips of paper thing. One of the first books I read I dog-eared the pages I was going to need. Yeah, yeah, so sue me. I have great reverence for Books but not necessarily for mass-produced crap on acidic paper and no of course I didn’t do this to a book at one of my own libraries – I do have sense if not the reverence people might assume a librarian has. But I mean, really, we’d know about mass-produced crap on acidic paper and it is crap. I can’t tell you how much crap just falls apart. What do we do with crap that has fallen apart and is of no use to anyone? I won’t say it out loud…
In any case, would you care for a cup of tea in my parlor? This is the question I was thinking my second great-grandmother Mary Ann might have asked her neighbors. I learned about the way the parlor was a “memory palace” of the home and carefully tended by womenfolk. Its place in the Victorian home. The brick-a-brack. The covered tables. The popular types of wallpaper patterns. The way it was a prized space. The way it gave way to the modern “living room” when conveniences such as central heating and plumbing more than doubled the price of home construction and specialized rooms gave way to more efficient spaces. I had half a dozen strips of paper in this chapter alone. I was already phrasing what I was going to say about “the parlor” in my family history.
Then I remembered.
Then I remembered Mary Ann was widowed four times in her life. She worked as a washerwoman after the death of my second great-grandfather and already had children from two marriages – including the one to my ancestor Davison – farmed out to family members. Maybe she knew the key to satisfaction in all life circumstances – maybe she was the Oprah Winfrey of her neighborhood – and I certainly hope that she was – but she saw a lot of heartache as well. Maybe she had a parlor. But I doubt she was re-wallpapering it as the fashions changed. And she was not the “upper middle class” this book was talking about. Her parlor was not the one in their illustrations.
After I realized this I started reading the book more carefully. It does a great job of covering the middle but mostly upper middle class. Well, Davison’s grandfather had some money but Mary Ann was broke and y’know what? For the antebellum period I was finding myself a little insulted by a history book that didn’t span class. We were poor at that point, and we counted, too. Maybe the book will get better, and I will definitely print a retraction if that’s the case.
