[Ebook recs] Gwen Raverat, "Period Piece"
One of the best accounts of a Victorian childhood that I've ever read (and let me tell you, I have read hundreds). Gwen Raverat was the granddaughter of Charles Darwin and the daughter of a Cambridge don. She led a very typical upper-middle-class childhood in Cambridge.
What is not typical is the verve and humour with which she explains the life of a late Victorian child, from education to religion to servants to Being a Lady to learning the rules of propriety. She also outlines the personalities of all of her eccentric Darwin uncles. Her book is illustrated with excellent little pen-and-ink sketches and is in general a delighting read.
The rules of propriety are supposed to have made life very complicated in the last century, but in practice, I can't say that I found nineteenth-century decency harder to manage than twentieth-century indecency. In fact, I always find it easier to pretend to be shocked, when I am not shocked, than to pretend not to be shocked when I am. So that, on the whole, I got on quite well in the 'nineties.
But some things were very queer. For instance, there were the river picnics. All summer, Sheep's Green and Coe Fen were pink with boys, as naked as God made them; for bathing drawers did not exist then; or, at least, not on Sheep's Green. You could see the pinkness, dancing about, quite plain, from the end of our Big Island. Now to go Up the River, the goal of all the best picnics, the boats had to go right by the bathing places, which lay on both sides of the narrow stream. These dangerous straits were taken in silence, and at full speed. The Gentlemen were set to the oars-in this context one obviously thinks of them as Gentlemen-and each Lady unfurled a parasol, and, like an ostrich, buried her head in it, and gazed earnestly into its silky depths, until the crisis was past, and the river was decent again.
Sometimes we children were sent off to fetch a compass round about the danger zone, and to be picked up by the boats further on; but sometimes we went in the boats with the grown-ups. And then I-but not Charles, which was so unfair-was given a parasol, and told to put it up, and not to look 'because it was horrid'. I obediently put up the parasol and carefully arranged it between myself and the ladies, so that I could see comfortably, without hurting their feelings. For I thought the bathing place one of the most beautiful sights in the world: the thin naked boys dancing about in the sunlight on the bright green grass; the splashing, sparkling river; the reckless high dives, when the slim bodies shot down through the air like angels coming down from heaven: it was splendid, glorious, noble; it wasn't horrid at all. It was the ladies who were horrid; but then, poor things, they always were even stupider than most other grown-ups.
I had not the faintest idea why they objected to passing the bathing sheds; though, with the fuss they made, it was really extraordinary that they never succeeded in putting ideas into my head. But they never did.
Period Piece via Project Gutenberg Canada
(Please be aware of the copyright laws of your own country)
View poll: #10265
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/491333.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
What is not typical is the verve and humour with which she explains the life of a late Victorian child, from education to religion to servants to Being a Lady to learning the rules of propriety. She also outlines the personalities of all of her eccentric Darwin uncles. Her book is illustrated with excellent little pen-and-ink sketches and is in general a delighting read.
The rules of propriety are supposed to have made life very complicated in the last century, but in practice, I can't say that I found nineteenth-century decency harder to manage than twentieth-century indecency. In fact, I always find it easier to pretend to be shocked, when I am not shocked, than to pretend not to be shocked when I am. So that, on the whole, I got on quite well in the 'nineties.
But some things were very queer. For instance, there were the river picnics. All summer, Sheep's Green and Coe Fen were pink with boys, as naked as God made them; for bathing drawers did not exist then; or, at least, not on Sheep's Green. You could see the pinkness, dancing about, quite plain, from the end of our Big Island. Now to go Up the River, the goal of all the best picnics, the boats had to go right by the bathing places, which lay on both sides of the narrow stream. These dangerous straits were taken in silence, and at full speed. The Gentlemen were set to the oars-in this context one obviously thinks of them as Gentlemen-and each Lady unfurled a parasol, and, like an ostrich, buried her head in it, and gazed earnestly into its silky depths, until the crisis was past, and the river was decent again.
Sometimes we children were sent off to fetch a compass round about the danger zone, and to be picked up by the boats further on; but sometimes we went in the boats with the grown-ups. And then I-but not Charles, which was so unfair-was given a parasol, and told to put it up, and not to look 'because it was horrid'. I obediently put up the parasol and carefully arranged it between myself and the ladies, so that I could see comfortably, without hurting their feelings. For I thought the bathing place one of the most beautiful sights in the world: the thin naked boys dancing about in the sunlight on the bright green grass; the splashing, sparkling river; the reckless high dives, when the slim bodies shot down through the air like angels coming down from heaven: it was splendid, glorious, noble; it wasn't horrid at all. It was the ladies who were horrid; but then, poor things, they always were even stupider than most other grown-ups.
I had not the faintest idea why they objected to passing the bathing sheds; though, with the fuss they made, it was really extraordinary that they never succeeded in putting ideas into my head. But they never did.
Period Piece via Project Gutenberg Canada
(Please be aware of the copyright laws of your own country)
View poll: #10265
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/491333.html. Please comment there using OpenID.