Social event at the Alexandra Club, c. 1911.
IMAGE F-06593 COURTESY OF ROYAL BC MUSEUM, BC ARCHIVES
“Above stairs” society in early Victoria was a composite of many things. The upper-class settlers were predominantly British, and it was they who turned the city into a natural breeding ground for anyone who might consider himself part of an old aristocracy in a new world. With money, power, and a natural inclination to dominate, these new aristocrats successfully managed to become the ruling hierarchy for the first seventy-five years of Victoria’s existence.
The wind of change, however, was already blowing by the time war was declared in 1914, and with the changes would come a new order. An industrial revolution in Britain, women’s rights, a declining economy in British Columbia, and a devastating world war had all contributed to the process that ultimately led to the destruction of that old way of life. Through the lives of some of the families who made up the early high society of Victoria, we have glimpsed those years.
It is easy to imagine the charm, the elegance, the beauty, and the leisurely pace of life that existed in Victoria’s halcyon years, and it is still pleasant to reflect on that scenario from today’s perspective. It was a time when upper-class ladies and gentlemen occupied themselves with pursuits that seemed to them to be of the greatest importance but would be deemed trivial in today’s world.
The ladies of Victoria, for example, spent a great deal of their time keeping scrapbooks up to date. In these books they kept a variety of clippings—favourite poems, old photographs, pressed flowers of a sentimental nature, and sometimes even some cleverly worded sayings such as “No person wants STRAW spelled backward on the end of his nose.”
One young Victoria lady’s collection contains some “Hints on Selecting a Husband.” This piece asserted that there are four significant types of head to be found in the male population. One type is weak, another is conceited and unreasonable, one is strong and combative, and one is strong and balanced. It was up to the young lady to be smart enough to choose the right head type when selecting her husband.
If that task proved too difficult, the article encouraged her to study the thumbs of her gentleman friend. They were considered to be a key. For instance, if the “thumb be long and well-shaped and the lower or nail joint is of nearly the same length as the upper joint, there is a good balance of will power and intellect.”131
Young ladies of Victoria obviously used a great deal of energy thinking about their future husbands. One delightful clipping, titled “How to Cook a Husband,” instructed them on how to behave once they had found their man.
As Mr. Glass said of the hare, you must first catch him. Having done so, the mode of cooking him, so as to make a good dish of him is as follows:—Many good husbands are spoiled in the cooking; some women go about it as if their husbands were bladders, and blow them up. Others keep them constantly in hot water, while others freeze them by conjugal coldness. Some smother them with hatred, contention and variance, and some keep them in pickle all their lives.
These women always serve them up with tongue sauce. Now it cannot be supposed that husbands will be tender and good if managed in that way. But they are, on the contrary, very delicious when managed as follows: Get a large jar called the jar of carefulness (which all good wives have on hand), place your husband in it and set him near the fire of conjugal love; let the fire be pretty hot, and especially let it be clear—above all, let the heat be constant. Cover him over with affection, kindness and subjection. Garnish with modest, becoming familiarity, and the spice of pleasantry; and if you had kisses and other confectioneries let them be accompanied with a sufficient portion of secrecy, mixed with prudence and moderation. We would advise all good wives to try this recipe and realize how admirable a dish a husband is when properly cooked.132
Another excellent maxim that the young ladies of Victoria might have believed can be found in the words “Be obstinately just, Indulge no passion, and Deceive no trust,” clipped into one scrapbook.
Those same prim and proper women also enjoyed the risqué humour found in another clipping:
The lady was leaning on the arm of an elegant and wealthy young man and leading her little daughter by the hand, when suddenly the child cried: “Oh, ma, ma, look there! See that gentleman that’s passing. Don’t you know him?” “No-no, my child,” the lady replies. ‘Why, mamma, he was my pa last year.” Ma faints!133
Elizabeth Rithet was a prime example of a young woman in Victoria who kept an elaborate scrapbook. Katherine O’Reilly was equally indulgent in her collection of memorabilia and was also a prolific writer and journal keeper.
Another pastime that occupied the ladies for the greater part of every day was the selection of and changing into their outfits (sometimes as many as five times in one day) in order to suit the social function in which they were participating. They might appear at breakfast time in a riding habit in order to take an early morning ride, but other meals required a more suitable and appropriate dress. Even for the ritual of afternoon teas, it was appropriate to change into a tea gown. No sooner was tea over than it was time to change again and dress for dinner.
A particularly hypocritical aspect of Victorian life can be found in the general attitude toward the wearing of cosmetics. If a lady wanted to use them in those days, it had to be with such discretion that the final effect appeared to be nothing more than a mere improvement on nature. Only actresses or women of ill repute would openly admit to using any form of makeup. Chinese Leaves for the Cheeks and Lips, and such things as Magnetic Rock Dew Water of the Sahara or Venus’s Toilet Water (lotions for the skin) were used sparingly. Most women had to be content with a vigorous application of soap and water or sponge and brush to a contrast of colour on an otherwise pale face.
Although cosmetic improvement had to be minimal, the dressing of hair was both elaborate and time-consuming. Ladies’ maids often spent hours combing, brushing, plaiting, and even polishing their mistresses’ hair, until the desired effect was created.
And while all these frivolities were taking place, the men went about their business, involving themselves in financial deals and aiming for political greatness. It was a time of new building, exciting discoveries, and new inventions, and a general transformation of Victoria, from tranquil hamlet to boom town, was taking place. As a result, men of initiative took part, grabbing at opportunities as they came along.
Dinner parties were scenes of important political decision-making, and many a glass of port and a cigar shared with a colleague in the smoking room would seal a business deal. The smoking room, incidentally, was the special room added to most upper-class houses, along the lines of the one first installed by Queen Victoria at Osborne House in order to accommodate, in her words, gentlemen who wished to indulge the disgusting habit of smoking.
Throughout the first seventy-five years of Victoria’s growth, social divisions were always very apparent. These divisions were reflected in the way the settlers worshipped, the way they entertained themselves, their sporting activities, and where they sent their children to school. Class distinction was of the utmost importance, even to where and how residents were laid to rest at the end of their journey through life.
The population in those years fluctuated at an alarming rate. The initial influx of humanity as a result of the two gold rushes, almost twenty-five thousand people, encouraged both speculation and prosperity. But, as often happens, much of the initial prosperity disappeared once the population settled down to six thousand.
Following a somewhat depressed economy after the 1860s, Victoria’s population took a dramatic plunge to around fifteen hundred and did not rise again until the early 1880s. The new aristocrats managed to weather every economic storm as it came along. For some, it even meant that their accumulated wealth grew to phenomenal proportions. Those who were wise invested in property, and their offspring were the beneficiaries for years. As one descendant of a well-to-do pioneer family noted in the 1980s, “Their wealth was handed down to us. We did not earn it. Today, we are merely the caretakers.”134
After a real estate collapse in the early part of the twentieth century and the First World War, some of the original upper class lost vast fortunes. More important was the loss of the old familiar way of life. Future generations found themselves forced into a simpler lifestyle as they tried to rebuild those fortunes. Nothing, it would seem, was ever the same again in Victoria, and that intriguing time of upper- and lower-class society, when each knew his place and accepted his position in life, was gone.
Social event at the Alexandra Club, c. 1911.
IMAGE F-06593 COURTESY OF ROYAL BC MUSEUM, BC ARCHIVES
The leisurely, elegant lifestyle depicted in this text was available only to those who were financially secure and well placed in life. If this were the case, an exceptionally privileged existence could be enjoyed. For those settlers of means, or for those who later made their fortunes and managed to infiltrate the inner sanctum of high society, life in Victoria’s early years was indeed pleasant and comfortable and, in many respects, very similar to the life being led in England by people in similar circumstances.
Nonetheless, in Victoria it was a unique time, a time when elegance and tradition mingled side by side with a new, raw, cosmopolitan environment, and there was “an impatience to grow very quickly into a position which had taken older cities decades to attain.”135
Victoria’s aristocrats who lived “above stairs” had helped to make it happen.