Today I found myself at an ironing board — with a hot iron — rescuing hand-tatted lace made by my Great-grandmother. She came from Cornwall at the age of 12. When she was a babe-in-arms, her father left for America due to a catastrophic collapse of the tin mines. These very same mines had been delivering tin to the world since the Phoenicians, but there is an end to supply when industrial rapaciousness takes over.
She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, and yet performed all of the tasks required by living without electricity or running water, in a small house made of 4 homestead houses that had been required to file homestead claims. (Each claim required a 10 ft X 12 ft. Box with a roof.) I visited her when I was a very young child. She had a Victorian red velvet pillow on the settee that had an imprint of the liner that brought her and her mother to America. Her water came from a bucket that resided on the counter. There was a tin dipper to fill your cup if you were thirsty. The wood stove had a copper tub attached that was for heating water — if you needed it. My brother and I slept on a bed that was set up on the dining table. This made it more difficult for scorpions to join us while we slept. They kept a Jersey cow in the middle of New Mexico, and no doubt many, many Cornish pasties were baked in her oven. There was a bowl of red hot candies in the spice cupboard for well-behaved children, and a wind-up Victrola in the living room.
By 1951, she had graduated from two boards between a tree, to an actual outhouse. I mention this because more than anything, she was Everywoman. But . . . Along with milking the cow, tending the garden, baking for the ranch hands, doing the laundry, the ironing, and all the other myriad “domestic chores” of the period, she found time to make lace by the yard. Crocheted, tatted, embroidered, it went on and on. I have lace bedspreads, tablecloths. “McCassers” were laid on the backs of chairs to protect from the omnipresent Edwardian hair oil. Doilies attempted to hide the ever-present dust. Many find these decorations quaint, silly, or completely unnecessary — perhaps burdensome, or many of a million other negative adjectives.
During the Great Depression of 1929, she ran a small grocery store out of her living room while caring for her grandchildren (my parents). Her daughter had to go to work as a widow to support her children and her parents. So did many others. Great Grandmother built lace with strings from packages that came in the mail. Why? Because it was a disgrace if a woman had to “work” for a living. Women selling their wares out of second story windows were called “working girls” for a reason.
If my Grandmother had not been married to a veteran of WWI, she would not have been able to get a job as a typist for the federal Import/Export office in the town where she lived. For this bit of luck in finding employment, my great-grandmother made lace tablecloths and other “niceties” so that my “Grandmother” could feel like a lady (even though she had to work). My christening gown has tatted lace on it for trim. The doily I am ironing today (with 19th century technology) has that same delicate tatted lace decorating its edge.
There is a good chance that this piece of cloth is very close to a hundred years old. As I repair it, there are serious suggestions that America should return to that “blessed time” when “men were men” and “women held up half the world”. The “West”, as it was described by endless television programs for decades, was tamed by men with guns who independently took the law into their own hands to tame the west. I submit that the real tamers of the west were the ladies who came west and longed for lace curtains on their windows.
As a girl of the west, one of my lessons was gun safety. This was right after WWII. I still know how to use one, but don’t own one. My other lesson as a girl was how to embroider. That is by far the better occupation. Even though “lady’s handwork” may smack of elitism, catholic school education for women, or the blindness brought on by the lace made by women in Brittany, it is also something more. In the quicksand that is the low status of women’s labor, bridal dowries as wealth management, and so many other barriers to female equality, I can see glimmers of the tree limb of creative lace-making keeping many from sinking below the burden of gender expectations. Something can be said of the ability to create beauty.
Once upon a time, Sumptuary Laws ensured that you could be punished by dressing above your station. While that fact may point to many things, the subversive truth of it is that all it took was the right cloth to define how important you were. Seamstresses and lacemakers starved, worked themselves into blindness so that aristocrats could put lace on their clothing, but even royalty recognized that lace can be stolen, mannerisms copied, disguises accomplished. All that a gun can do is hurt people at best, and kill them at worst. It’s time to put two myths to bed: one, that a good man with a gun can solve every problem, and two, Ladies should return to their proper places.
your stories , "put the myth to rest "
no question about that! i look forward to more wisdom from you.