Another look at Victorian Life in ol' Fall River
Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 7:43 pm
This is part of the introduction to a brief article on Margaret Fuller by Allegra Wong, but it paints a pretty picture of live in ol' Fall River:
Source: http://www.critiquemagazine.com/article/fuller.htmlI remember watching my grandmother water the coleus and the begonias in our Fall River, Massachusetts, kitchen when I was a young child in the late 1950’s. The plant pot saucers would brim, overflow. She watered with the red metal teapot my Uncle Andrew bought her for Mother’s Day when he was a little boy because it reminded her, she said, not of his being little so much anymore, but of her being little. Reminded her of lamps being fueled with whale oil instead of electricity. Lilac dusk settling in. Reminded her of peering out from corners while women tatted, of gardenias scenting hot summer nights in her nursery. Reminded her of the Sandwich glass lamp’s glow caressing a paisley shawl lying along the back of a Victorian sofa. The lamp’s parchment shade.
I remember being five years old and listening to my grandmother’s Fall River stories of Victorian times: ice-skating and sleighing parties on the North Watuppa Pond. Phrenology, hydrotherapy, Christian Science healings exhibited, platformed, outside city hall, just downtown; monthly seances with Mrs. Calhoun in her green-and-gold damask parlor; the study clubs held in one another’s homes—Wednesday morning Ladies’ Reading Group, Saturday afternoon’s Minerva gathering.
But most of all, I remember how my grandmother read to me evenings. She’d put aside the storybooks through which we’d be leafing together at the kitchen table, and say, “Now I’ll take you into my world,” and she’d spread out her father’s books and read me of Whitman’s America singing. “I’ll show you my true world,” she’d say. And she’d read me Thoreau … ‘I’ve come to these woods to find myself.’ “Come into my world,” she’d command, and she’d read me the outcries of George Sand—‘work, freedom, air to breathe, poetry, education, honor are all we women ask.’