Victorian Homes: Public Spaces

Part of my second mystery, Marry in Haste, will take place in a large Victorian home in 1893. I lived in such a house when I first moved to Monmouth, Illinois in the 1960s. In my last post I discussed the history of the W.W. McCullough house, and now I'm continuing that thread with a post about two of the rooms in the house: the front hallway and the front public parlor. Both were meant to impress because the worth of a woman and the wealth of a man back then were measured by the state of their home. After extensively researching the houses and furnishings of that time, I can imagine what the McCullough house might have looked like in 1893.

W.W. McCullough's house at 402 W. Broadway would have been

impressive. It contained three floors and a full basement with a staircase in the front going up to the bedrooms and a ballroom, and stairs in the back for the servants. [Besides the front entrance, this photo shows an entrance on the west side of the house that went into a library/office. The entrance was gone when I lived there in the 1960s.]

At the main entrance, visitors, facing north, walked up the six porch steps to a large, wooden front door with a round, brass bell knob. They first brushed the dirt and dust from their shoes since the streets and sidewalks were not yet bricked this far west of the Square. Then they pulled on the knob to ring an inside bell, summoning a servant. According to the city directories of that time, servants were of various ethnicities, some of their last names being Blusma, Martin, McCleary, Quinlan, and Wennerstrom.

The front hallway--designed to impress--had a high ceiling, which afforded the opportunity to use fashionable, leaded windows high on the west wall and a hanging light fixture. The visitor faced a wide staircase whose carpeting continued the same dark, richly colored Brussels carpet on the floor of the hallway. Walnut railings and woodwork with ornamental carvings decorated the staircase. At the first landing, a large vase sat in the corner with tall ferns. A family member reached the landing, turned right, and followed another set of stairs to the second floor. The walls of this front hallway were painted a light color with wooden wainscoting and a chair rail dividing the tall walls into thirds.

In the hallway were three critical items: a hall tree, a chair, and a card receiver. The hall tree had curved arms to hold canes, umbrellas, and walking sticks. Also, a space for hats and coats surrounded a mirror on the hall tree where a caller could check her appearance before meeting the family. A chair was placed nearby so a visiting servant might sit and wait for an answer to a message he'd delivered. Sometimes the chair was actually part of the hall tree.

The card receiver was often silver-plated and sat on a small stand.

From 1870-1910, calling and card leaving rituals were crucial for women "of society." Ladies would "call" in the afternoon. If the owner was "at home," the visitor left two of her husband's cards on the receiver but kept her own. If the lady of the house was "not at home," the visitor left all three cards. The response might be an actual visit from the lady of the house or a written note delivered by a servant. 

A set of beautifully carved pocket doors opened to the visitor's right and led into a front (or public) parlor. In the late 1960s, when I lived in this house, the downstairs was a massive room that went from the front to the back of the house with no barriers. But in the late 1800s, the downstairs contained a wall across the middle of the living room, separating a public parlor and a private, or family, parlor. Let's consider what the front parlor might have looked like.

A Victorian parlor in Galena, Il.

First, it was designed to make a strong impression of wealth, health, moral values, and happiness, and it was cleaned daily. It had a chandelier--probably gas-lit by the late 1800s. Gas lighting was in use during this decade and the wall sconces were still apparent when I lived in the house in the 1960s. Other lighting came from south and east windows that were draped in large-patterned lace curtains. The walls would have been painted in light tints--cream, pearl, olive, or gray--or might have been wallpapered in a delicate scroll or vine pattern. On the floor was a combination of Brussels carpet with colored rush matting around the edges of the room.

A table generally graced the center of a Victorian parlor and on it was a leather-bound, hefty, family Bible, along with other treasures. A corner etagere displayed artifacts the family had collected: shells, figurines, and dried flowers. As for the furniture, the front parlor held gentlemen's chairs (high backs with arms) and side chairs. Ladies' chairs had no arms and, thus, no back support. This allowed women to position petticoats and skirts and encouraged the female posture requirements of that day. Gender defined by furniture! Often the chair backs would be covered with

washable doilies and antimacassars to keep them free of hair pomade. They placed the furniture symmetrically against the walls with small and large works of art hung just above them. This helped balance the high ceilings. Mirrors, portraits, and family photographs decorated the room and also free-standing easels or pedestals held paintings and prints. The chairs were made of mahogany and the tables topped with marble.

The east wall of 402 was rounded outward about halfway to the dining area on the north end of the house. This was probably the point at which a wall divided the front and back parlors in 1893. 

My next post will imagine the rest of the main floor in 1893: the back parlor, dining room, kitchen, and library.

Why Do We Love Mysteries?

          One of my former students, who is an intelligent and voracious reader, asked me this question when I announced on Facebook that I'd like to hear questions about writing.

          I have a couple of theories. My first would be that we love to figure out and solve problems. Often I read and read to get to the end of a mystery because I haven't figured it out and I'm dying to know how it ends. An effective writer can hide those clues so they are in plain sight, but we don't catch them because of the writer's craft. Actually it is important that the writer leave clues in plain sight because readers become very unhappy when the clues are left until the last ten pages of the book. It doesn't give them a fair chance.

          I just finished an amazing book by Thomas H. Cook called The Chatham School Affair. His writing style is gorgeous and lyrical. His story is told first person by an elderly lawyer who, earlier in life, was the son of the school's head master and a student at the school. The tale is dark. It is about a terrible event at this private school, an event beyond imagining.

          But Cook is clever in giving the reader pieces of the jigsaw puzzle here and there. He flawlessly combines past, present, and future in his narrative and he does it so seamlessly that the reader is constantly left guessing the details of this terrible event. Suspense is everywhere--the reader knows something terrible happened from the first pages, but she doesn't know what it was. Only when the reader comes to the end does she see how it all fits together. It is a perfect example of why we can't put mysteries down.

          I believe a second reason we love mysteries is because they show us a darker side of human nature, a side that many believe we all have but keep in check--unless, perhaps, we are serial killers or sociopaths. The idea of a "good person" coming in contact with someone who has unleashed that darker side is an intriguing combination.

      
    I was reading another blog today--"At First Glance" by Sandra Parshall at the blog, Poe's Deadly Daughters. It referred to a recent article in Psychology Today called "What's In a Face?" that discusses whether our first impressions of people are accurate. Can we spot criminals when we first see them? I believe our curiosity about these people and situations is one of the reasons we read mysteries. We could have brushed past a killer on the street and not have known it. But we can read about these killers in mysteries and we can do so in the safety of our arm chairs. Whew! That's a relief.

The Hook of a Book: It's a Mystery

Do you recognize these famous first lines from novels?

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

          "It was a pleasure to burn."
    
     "All children, except one, grow up."

         "Call me Ishmael."


        If you guessed Pride and Prejudice, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, and Moby-Dick, then you are the fish that these authors hooked.  Sometimes the hardest part of writing a book is the first line. If you read books about the process of writing, you'll often discover that authors spend days, weeks, months, coming up with that perfect first line.


That hook must interest, thrill, foreshadow, intrigue, delight, and/or steal your mind completely, and all in a single line. Mystery Scene magazine devotes a page in each of their issues to announce some of the best first lines in new mysteries and thrillers.

        And why is that first line so difficult? It must promise an adventure that will keep the reader's attention past the first page.  Once promised, it must deliver.  In the first example, we are promised the adventure of the universal man/woman chase, exemplified by the Bennet daughters snaring husbands, and we also preview the character flaws that will separate Elizabeth and Darcy for a considerable clump of pages. The irony of the line in Bradbury's book is that the fireman first burns books and then discovers the power of their words.  In Peter Pan, the reader wonders, "Who is this child that never grows up?" "And why does he never grow up?"  And finally, we wonder about the identity of Ishmael and what story he has to tell.


        When I joined a writing group a few years ago, I discovered that often the first two or three pages of a manuscript are composed of "spinning your wheels." [Well, all right.  It might be the first fifteen or twenty pages.] If you cut out several paragraphs or pages, you may find a better place to start.  Your hook is often part way through the first chapter.  It might be a conversation between two characters where the reader comes in during the middle of the dialogue.  This creates a situation in which the reader is eavesdropping and trying to figure out what is going on.


        The hook could also foreshadow what is coming, begin the action immediately, or hint at a main character that piques our interest, especially if that character has a few flaws.


"I often wonder if my life would have turned out differently if I hadn't picked up the gun lying on the floor beside his body."


"Like a silk scarf--a filmy one--falling through the air in slow motion--gliding, twisting, turning--the whiff of smoke floated silently into her dream."


"Despite the fact that there was no body, she planned the funeral, distributed a few of his personal things to his family, and took off her wedding ring after months of agonizing.  Then, walking down Fifth Avenue on a miserably foggy, damp, morning, she saw him--her dead husband--walking toward her with another woman."  [Okay, so that was two lines.]

"On Thursday, right after celebrating my fiftieth birthday, blowing out the candles, and drinking a teensy bit more than I should have with friends, I got the worst phone call a sister could ever receive."


Each of these "hooks" could begin a mystery, and one of them is the current first line of my book in progress.  But I won't tell you which one.  It's a mystery.

Murder in a Small Town

          I have lived in a small town [population 9,900] for a little over forty years.  I’m used to people saying, “Oh, you’re from Illinois?  What part of Chicago?”  Despite this geographical impairment in peoples’ minds, a small, downstate town makes a great setting for a cozy mystery. Cozies are extremely popular and entire websites are dedicated to such books, often created in a series.  The small town atmosphere is perfect for the backdrop of a story where an amateur sleuth—usually a woman—is drawn into a murder.  Small towns have unique characteristics that add to the plot and atmosphere of such a genre.  Their geographical landmarks and histories are only two of these characteristics.

          Currently I’m working on a mystery and drawing on my experience of living in a small town.  Here’s an example:  Our small town, like many tiny places, has a square in the center with two main streets bisecting it.  One, of course, is Main Street and the other is Broadway.   Seriously, since I have lived in this town I’ve become quite aware that no one knows clearly how to maneuver through this square.  And it isn’t really a square—it’s a circle with two lanes.  So here is the way I used our square/circle in describing my imaginary town of Endurance:

The center of town with surrounding businesses and shops, the Square was more a circle than a square and no one knew exactly how to drive around it, so defensive driving was the local custom.  This was particularly true since Danny Walker, after a few beers at Patsy’s Pub, decided to cruise the square multiple times in the wrong direction, taking out a fire hydrant and two signs for the Little People’s Daycare Center and Bert’s Collision Shop (‘You Scratch It, We Patch It.’)  The only thing he appeared to have missed was the neon ‘Open’ sign for the Homestretch Funeral Home, but the hazy memory of seeing it go past several times probably contributed to his contrition once he sobered up.

          And Danny was apprehended quite quickly because his neighbors saw the crime and reported it, and he was a known quantity at the small town police department.  Believe me, this isn’t Los Angeles or New York.

          My mystery has a female sleuth who is drawn reluctantly into a murder.  She is not a detective or a crime solver by occupation; sometimes she is a book store owner, a teacher, a knitting club member, or a minister.  In my book, the main character is a high school teacher who has recently retired and  she is drawn into the first murder when she takes over the part-time newspaper job of a former colleague who is the victim of the murder.  She has friends and former students who help her in various situations as she is slowly pulled into a darker part of the town that she never knew existed.

          Lurking beneath the surface are old injuries, past grudges and grievances, and—of course—they often lead to murders most foul.