A studio photo of Margaret, my husband's great grandmother taken around 1910.
"Well, she may be French, but she does not read Salon de la Mode, that's for certain."
Flora, seated on a sturdy pine kitchen chair, was reading out a letter from Mother written the Saturday morning. The tea was steeping on the kitchen table in the family pot bundled in a dark brown crocheted cozy. Margaret was being uncharacteristically catty about Madame Laurier, at Quebec, where she was participating in the Tercentenary Celebrations. "Her dress was a crumpled balloon-shaped mess."Of course, we all looked dowdy compared to the Heralds walking the streets in their purple capes and green bloomers and big broad hats with enormous feathers.Sir Wilfrid has all the style in that couple. . Yes, I saw the great man, but only from afar. I do have a lot to tell you but I will wait until I get home. I will probably write more in this letter when I get to La Tuque and mail it from there. We are leaving soon."
Marion and Edith and Flo all chuckled.
Salon de la Mode was a high fashion magazine, one that the Nicholsons didn't read either. When Ethel C,'s aunt went to Europe she brought back a copy of the magazine from Paris; it was a flimsy publication compared to the Delineator or even the Ladies' Home Journal, but it contained a two page spread of an elegant wedding party with a simply delicious bridal gown, a voluptuous cascade of silk, crepe, and organdy, all beaded in mother of pearl. Ethel sighed and swore, in far-too-sincere fashion, that she was going to wear a dress just like that - and within two years. And ever since then the Nicholsons had used Salon de la Mode as a private code for high fashion.
Edith poured some green tea and Flora continued. Sunday afternoon:We arrived here at half past eleven, had a hot, dirty trip. Had to drive a mile to the hotel where we are boarding and the worst hills you ever saw. Where we boarded in Quebec was very nice,by the way. I thought I liked the cooking. This is not very nice and I don't think I will stay here very long and the flies just terrible and today has been very hot. Father is going down to Grand Ligne tomorrow, so I will go with him. I hope you are getting along all right. Father says to get Stanley to cut the grass. The scenery is just beautiful here. I may go fishing or picking berries tomorrow, at the camp. It will be lovely, the peace and quiet after Quebec. I've had my fill of hearing bands playing O Canada, I tell you." Love Mother. Remember to eat!
"I guess," said Marion "we will have to wait to hear all about the celebrations." She was disappointed.
But Flora suspected, as did Marion, that Mother was being tactful. She did not want to rub it in, especially to Edith, about how grand everything was. It was no secret: The newspapers had been full of stories about the pageant performances, with photographs of the many members of Quebec high society dressed up in powdered wigs and purple hose to entertain - and educate- the 10's of thousands visitors to their city with some leading citizens dressed as Henry IV and his entourage, Jacques Cartier and Dollard, even as some bronzed Indians, in their war feathers and stripped to the waist. The concerts, the sports for the soldiers, the tattoos and military parades in the crowded and festooned streets of the old city, where every window was draped in bunting, and the spectacular military review on the Plains of Abraham, it had all been described in detail. The French Bluejackets swarming all over town, on friendly terms with all their British, Canadian and American counterparts. Lord Roberts, the greatest living soldier walking in the steps of General Wolfe and mourning at the grave of Montcalm. The New Hampshire, the last of the great white ships, been blown into Harbour. The Prince of Wales arriving on a great modern battleship, the Indomitable, and being met by the Governor General and then spirited to the Citadel in a fine carriage pulled by eight glistening black horses and feted at a great ball at Parliament.
No, Margaret was holding back this time, for she normally wrote about her adventures in detail while away. Even if she was just around the corner in Kingsbury or Coaticook, she described a good (or bad meal) or even the scenery. That's what letters were for. In 1902, on a trip to New York to see her friend Mrs. Pray, she wrote enthusiastically in letters home about all the tall tall buildings, busy department stores, the chaotic city streets, teeming with pedestrians and trams and wagons, and her eventful trip across the Brooklyn Bridge where she was caught in an open carriage in a squall with hail the size of peas and cherries, raining down on her. No, clearly something was on her mind. Something was keeping her pen unusually still.
