The itinerary was culture.
A debutante need be immersed. Her manners, tested. Her status, presented. In the Victorian era, young women traveled Europe to broaden their education. . . and marital prospects.
Follow our fictional friend Johanna on her Grand Tour.
Not every Victorian father thought children were to be seen and not heard.
Robert Louis Stevenson brought his stepson along on his honeymoon. Alexander Graham Bell hoped to give his daughter a strange name. And Harry Houdini. . . You’ll have to read his story to believe it.
Mr. Weston would never marry again.
Pish posh!
Emma had witnessed a fondness between him and Miss Taylor ever since the day their paths crossed on Broadway-lane. Upon returning from their wedding, Emma boasts to her father and Mr. Knightley of how she “planned the match from that hour.”
“Where is your merit?” Mr. Knightley asks. “What are you proud of? You made a lucky guess; and that is all that can be said.”
“A lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston’s visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all.”
This installment of The Art of Matchmaking provides a guide to the talent of how to make a match.
Not all matches are made in heaven.
Some are made in Hartfield, by Jane Austen’s Emma.
This first installment of The Art of Matchmaking explores the best traits when taking “so active a part in bringing any two people together.” A portion of these qualities is exemplified by the meddlesome heroine. But, of course, not all. . .
Welcome to the middle.
Three years. Three years stretch between the time Victoria and Albert said “how do you do” and “I do.” Here lies an account of their courtship period. Told through letters, diaries, and accounts from bystanders.
No one is daring anyone to wear a corset on a hellish day.
Below a list of activities unfolds sure to introduce yesteryear charm and delight. For you are, as poet Henry David Thoreau said, about to be “rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days.”
However shall you occupy them? Perhaps. . .
Cordelia of Green Gables.
Imagine if Marilla had indulged her young charge of such a fancy. Anne with an “e,” might never have come to be. At least, not in today’s iconic capacity.
And what a shame that would have been since Anne fits her “to a T. Or should [it] be E?” says the Anne of Green Gable’s Blog in its post What’s In A Name?
Names matter a great deal. Knowing this to be true, it’s no wonder our heroine said, “I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.”
Which divinely beautiful name will you choose?
