Phoebe Junior by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
[Phoebe’s grandmother offers
her a family heirloom brooch]
“I should like Mrs Tom to see
you with that brooch as she’s always wanting for Minnie. Now why should I give
my brooch to Minnie?”
“Certainly not, grandmamma,”
said Phoebe, “you must wear your brooches yourself, that is what I like a great
deal better than giving them either to Minnie or me.”
“Ah, but there ain’t many like
you, my sweet,” cried the old woman, wiping her eyes…
It is unnecessary to say that Phoebe’s
disinterestedness about her grandmother’s brooch was not perhaps so noble as it
appeared on the outside. The article in question was a kind of small
warming-pan in a very fine solid gold mount, set with large pink topazes, and
enclosing little wavy curls of hair, one from the head of each young Tozer of
the last generation. It was a piece of jewellery very well known in
Carlingford, and the panic which rose in Phoebe’s bosom when it was offered for
her own personal adornment is more easily imagined than described.
comments: More from this most enjoyable book, and another example of the realistic view of the heroine, as well as a chance to find some pictures of that key artefact of Victorian life, the mourning brooch.
The plot of Phoebe Junior is obsessed with religion
and social class: it is sometimes hard to work out the different gradations,
and though Mrs O thinks much of it is ridiculous, she does not in my opinion go far
enough in her condemnation. (Wait till we get on to Oliphant's The Perpetual Curate on the blog). But still, this is surprisingly socialist-sounding in context:
To be without a housemaid is dreadful.
The moment you think of that, you see how important the people who work are;
everything comes to a stand-still without Mary, whereas there are ladies whose
absence would make no difference.
Phoebe’s family is coming up in the world, but their recent
origins are in (very successful) trade, and her grandmother Mrs Tozer, the
owner of the brooch, is shown splendidly regretting their move to a big posh
house in the country
“Talk of a garden… a thing as never changes except according to the seasons! Up in the town there was never a day the same, something always happening—Soldiers marching through, or Punch and Judy, or a row at the least. It is the cheerfullest place in the whole world, I do believe; shut up here may do for the gentry, but I likes the streets and what’s going on. You may call me vulgar if you please, but so I do.”
I love her choice of items, it sounds like the crowd scene
in a pantomime or (substituting for the very English Punch & Judy) the
Christmas-Eve-in-the-Quartier scene in any proper production of Puccini’s opera
La Boheme – scores of extras, live animals on stage, and plenty of children
from the local school running round.
A most enjoyable book, full of unexpected delights and very
funny. But the most recommended book by Mrs Oliphant is still Miss
Marjoribanks (and another post here),
which is an unknown and unjustly forgotten wonder, with one of the finest of Victorian heroines.
I looked at pages of Victorian brooches containing hair,
all hideous. I failed to find one that truly resembled a warming pan, but these
seemed a representative selection.
I have to agree, Moira, the custom of the brooch with hair in it is hideous. And yet, people did it... At any rate, that's interesting that this one has a sort of socialist bent, although it doesn't exactly sound like a call for action. And it's quite true: if the person you pay to clean the house, or deliver the groceries, or cut your hair weren't there, you'd notice quickly enough. That's not necessarily true of the person who lives in the exclusive house on the hill...
ReplyDeleteMrs Oliphant had such interesting views! Often contradictory, just like the rest of us. And I loved the modern way the young woman reacts to being offered the hideous brooch - 'Oh no! it's too good for me!'
DeleteMrs Oliphant didn't strike me as being very socialist, class (and Manners) seemed very important to her. But she did have an appreciation of the working class and wrote some good characters who were cooks, maids, gardeners, etc or "in trade" like Phoebe's folks. "Mrs Arthur" is about a gentleman who marries "beneath himself" and the problems that couple has.
DeleteI think she had competing ideas - the rightness of the system she grew up in, and her own feelings which sometimes argued with that. She comes over as intelligent and kind-hearted, so must sometimes have questioned the system.
DeleteI will add Mrs Arthur to the list! thanks
Mrs Oliphant is such a good read. Yes, what hideous brooches! Chrissie
ReplyDeleteThey are both hideous and creepy, which presumably the Victorians didn't think? What WAS the attraction?
DeleteI'm sure I've recommended The Binks Family to you - dairy-owning family rises in the social scale, tries to follow a faulty etiquette book. By "John Strange Winter".
ReplyDeleteI don't think you have, it rings no bells. But I have just found a Kindle version and downloaded it! It does, as you imply, sound right up my street...
DeleteI am unfamiliar with Mrs. Oliphant and at first I got her confused with Ariadne Oliver. However, I think brooches in general are a generational taste. My grandmother had dozens she wore regularly, although none quite so hideous as to resemble a warming pan, and I kept a few. When I pin them onto a blazer, however, I usually forget it is there until the next time I wear it.
ReplyDeleteI love that idea! it's possible they had points of similarity.
DeleteYes, brooches to me mean a different age, my mother and grandmother both had them. And, like you, I tend to pin one on now and then and then forget them.
For some reason spinsters in 'tween the wars novels always seem to be wearing a brooch with the hair of one or more dead parents in it.
ReplyDeleteYes absolutely. Not only did those parents keep them at home and stop them meeting nice young men, they also kept their dead hands on them with the brooches.
DeleteIn fact I have just now found that Miss Silver has a locket with her parents' hair in it.... I probably came across it before, but only noticed because of reading this book.
It sounds as if Mrs. Tozer expects Phoebe to mourn on her behalf for previous generations. When did people stop mourning? Queen Victoria wore black for life after Albert's death. What did they do with the hair in a mourning brooch when they needed to put in someone else's - or did they have to acquire yet more brooches?
ReplyDeleteFord Madox Ford tells of an elderly lady who had a peculiar odour around her. After her death it turned out she had had a cigar, half-smoked by Franz Liszt in a locket around her neck for most of her life.
Saki has stories of servants going on strike, but the ultimate example is probably in Bellamy the Magnificent by Roy Horniman (author of the original for Kind Hearts and Coronets). Lord Bellamy has - inadvertently, as it were - seduced his valet's wife and his valet resigns his post, leaving Lord Bellamy's magnificence much tarnished. Lord Bellamy blackmails his valet into going back to him, but the valet has the final revenge.
There are so many mourning brooches out there - I think they just kept making new ones when another person died! Perhaps you waited till you had three new ones, say. The proper rules of mourning were so strict I think that people just didn't keep them - they would have been in black all the time. The Royals (apart from Queen Vic, who wanted to mourn) must have had ways round it - all those foreign relations dying all the time.
DeleteThen there is the cheat that is demi-mourning, which encompasses lilac colours... and a much-beloved (by me) quote from a GB Stern book: 'Papa did not think it necessary to go into full mourning… he went into Peter Robinson’s and asked for grey gloves, and the shop-walker, a very polite young fellow, said to him: ‘Grey gloves, sir? That will be in our Semi-Bereavement Department.’'
I've obviously never known who wrote Kind Hearst as that name is unfamiliar: Bellamy sounds most intriguing.
DeleteI always enjoyed the character of Hortense, Lady Dedlock's French (of course) maid in Bleak House. The scene where she walks through the grass in bare feet is memorable and uncomfortable.
French servants have a bad reputation in Victorian fiction - there's also the governess in Uncle Silas for an obvious example.
DeleteAbsolutely, and not just in Victorian times either! I was reading a Golden Age crime book and thinking that there must be more French maids called Louise in detective fiction than in real life, and not a good woman amongst them.
DeleteThis reminds me of a discussion we had here some years ago about French Governesses and how fabulous and uniquely portrayed the one in "The Enchanted Castle" by E. Nesbit is, compared to how French Governesses are usually depicted?
DeleteIndeed yes - I just checked back and that was allmost nine years ago! I quoted from you extensively on the blogpost
Deletehttps://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-enchanted-castle-by-e-nesbit.html
NINE years?! Blimey. Has it REALLY been the best part of a decade?
DeleteI know, I find it hard to believe too
DeleteOh what a lot you've given us to consider! There's the ever-wonderful Mrs Oliphant (with a book I have yet to read), and mourning brooches with hair from the dearly departed, which I've always thought was quite, quite revolting. Then there's the liveliness of town compared to unchanging life in the country, and the nuances of social class, and the importance of workers, like the housemaid, who are unnoticed and unappreciated until they are not there.
ReplyDeleteThank you! A comment that tells me I achieved just what I want to.
DeleteJudging by some of her books, I think Mrs Oliphant must have been a very religious person. Perhaps it helped her sustain the loss of her family--I hope something did!
ReplyDeleteYes a good point - she certainly took it seriously. And the light witty tone of the books is brave considering all the difficulties of her life.
DeleteHair jewellery was also very much about mementoes, not just of the dead - it was a popular pastime for people with too much time on their hands to create pictures and things made out of the hair of loved ones, alive or dead. In the Green Knowe books (which I recall you really did not vibe with) there's a picture of Green Knowe worked from the hair of everyone in the household in The Chimneys of Green Knowe (it pops up again in An Enemy at Green Knowe), and locks of hair were usually incorporated into brooches. Hair jewellery was a custom that actually goes back a long way - Donne writes about "a bracelet of bright hair about the bone" in the early 17th century and by the 19th century it was actually quite the industry - a lot of actual hair jewellery from this period is really plaited horsehair, with the actual human hair contained in the lockets/glazed compartments.
ReplyDeleteThank you Daniel, that is fascinating information, though in my view quite creepy.
Delete