Torn Victorian Lace. Part the Second.
2.
Her Mum exclaimed, "Dear me, child, surely you'll not think of wearing that horrid old rag to the soirée! Oughtn't you have found a nice sheath?" Jemima pled, "It'll do, Mum, really, I'll mend it by hand." After a moment her Mum shook her head and said, "Well, maybe we have a few things could go with that, if fancy-dress it's to be." She dug in the back of a dresser drawer. "Here are your Grandmama's black lace gloves. They go past your elbow. How gay and elegant the styles were in your Grandmama's day. Everybody wanted to be Sarah Bernhardt. Oh fie, these gloves are torn."
Jemima said, "May I have them anyway, Mum? I don't mind, really I don't." Her Mum was opening a box from the back of a shelf in the wardrobe. "It could go with your Grandmama's black shawl with the long fringe and this cameo pin on a velvet ribbon. D'you know, the style in those days was called Art Nouveau?" Jemima thanked her Mum and promised to take good care of the ancestral accessories.
What to do for make-up? Her Mum never kept any about, and they had no money to spend on such frivolities. Jemima resolved that her resourcefulness was up to the challenge. There was a bit of cake-flour left in the pantry, and its fine lightness gave her an idea. Just a tiny amount was enough to powder her face. It looked a bit odd for her face to go all white, even as pale as she was. But it would have to do. Next, she sliced a beet-root and a drop or two of juice oozed forth, just enough to stain her lips a rich deep red. She scraped the lamp-black from all the lamp-chimneys in the house, enough to form a smooth black eye-liner cream when mixed with a speck of butter. She rolled a very thin paper cone and dipped it into a few pinches of fine coal-dust from the box by the stove. It worked well to define her eyebrows, producing a striking appearance. It went on heavier than she would have liked, and it smudged her eyelids much too darkly, but she told herself: "Can't be helped; mustn't grumble." She turned away from her grandmother's cracked full-length mirror on its carved oaken stand, hoping she didn't look too much of a fright.
When it was time for the soirée to begin, the former president of the local Women's Association got up to speak and cleared her throat. Although it had been over two years since she was president, she was still making all the speeches. "Thank you awfully much for coming out to-night under these trying conditions. But that's how you show what kind of stuff the English people are made of! Indomitable pluck! It helps our national defence to keep our spirits up, and to this end I suggest we begin by singing 'God Save the King'." At this there were groans and catcalls. "Go on with yer, Lucy, this 'ere's the spirits we need to raise! In glasses!" Loud choruses of agreement led to commencing the party with no further ado, and a small jazz-band struck up a favourite fox-trot.
As Jemima moved through the hall greeting friends, she was aware that folk looked at her strangely, but also that the wartime conditions had altered people's thinking just a bit, made their judgements more tolerant. To argue that bohemianism should be excluded from respectable society seemed vapid and pointless when everyone shared the knowledge they could all die soon. Thus Jemima had no difficulties from anyone over her appearance, and even received a few hesitant compliments, since she had clearly taken much care over her attire and toilette-in particular, the way her dark eye-liner enhanced the glamour of her luminous orbs. She began to sigh with relief that the evening hadn't turned out a disaster.
Her Mum exclaimed, "Dear me, child, surely you'll not think of wearing that horrid old rag to the soirée! Oughtn't you have found a nice sheath?" Jemima pled, "It'll do, Mum, really, I'll mend it by hand." After a moment her Mum shook her head and said, "Well, maybe we have a few things could go with that, if fancy-dress it's to be." She dug in the back of a dresser drawer. "Here are your Grandmama's black lace gloves. They go past your elbow. How gay and elegant the styles were in your Grandmama's day. Everybody wanted to be Sarah Bernhardt. Oh fie, these gloves are torn."
Jemima said, "May I have them anyway, Mum? I don't mind, really I don't." Her Mum was opening a box from the back of a shelf in the wardrobe. "It could go with your Grandmama's black shawl with the long fringe and this cameo pin on a velvet ribbon. D'you know, the style in those days was called Art Nouveau?" Jemima thanked her Mum and promised to take good care of the ancestral accessories.
What to do for make-up? Her Mum never kept any about, and they had no money to spend on such frivolities. Jemima resolved that her resourcefulness was up to the challenge. There was a bit of cake-flour left in the pantry, and its fine lightness gave her an idea. Just a tiny amount was enough to powder her face. It looked a bit odd for her face to go all white, even as pale as she was. But it would have to do. Next, she sliced a beet-root and a drop or two of juice oozed forth, just enough to stain her lips a rich deep red. She scraped the lamp-black from all the lamp-chimneys in the house, enough to form a smooth black eye-liner cream when mixed with a speck of butter. She rolled a very thin paper cone and dipped it into a few pinches of fine coal-dust from the box by the stove. It worked well to define her eyebrows, producing a striking appearance. It went on heavier than she would have liked, and it smudged her eyelids much too darkly, but she told herself: "Can't be helped; mustn't grumble." She turned away from her grandmother's cracked full-length mirror on its carved oaken stand, hoping she didn't look too much of a fright.
When it was time for the soirée to begin, the former president of the local Women's Association got up to speak and cleared her throat. Although it had been over two years since she was president, she was still making all the speeches. "Thank you awfully much for coming out to-night under these trying conditions. But that's how you show what kind of stuff the English people are made of! Indomitable pluck! It helps our national defence to keep our spirits up, and to this end I suggest we begin by singing 'God Save the King'." At this there were groans and catcalls. "Go on with yer, Lucy, this 'ere's the spirits we need to raise! In glasses!" Loud choruses of agreement led to commencing the party with no further ado, and a small jazz-band struck up a favourite fox-trot.
As Jemima moved through the hall greeting friends, she was aware that folk looked at her strangely, but also that the wartime conditions had altered people's thinking just a bit, made their judgements more tolerant. To argue that bohemianism should be excluded from respectable society seemed vapid and pointless when everyone shared the knowledge they could all die soon. Thus Jemima had no difficulties from anyone over her appearance, and even received a few hesitant compliments, since she had clearly taken much care over her attire and toilette-in particular, the way her dark eye-liner enhanced the glamour of her luminous orbs. She began to sigh with relief that the evening hadn't turned out a disaster.