19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, May 7, 1914: Two rooms got put in order for today.
The daintily flowered wallpaper and chair cushions, the plain rug and the curtains are all in various tones of lavender, while the two mahogany tables offer a pleasing bit of taste.
Ladies Home Journal (October, 1913)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Yeah! It must be wonderful for the spring cleaning to be about finished and to have redecorated rooms with new wallpaper. One room that was redone was the sitting room; I’m not sure about the other room.
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The October, 1913 issue of Ladies Home Journal had a fun article about decorating farmhouses:
Good Taste in the Farmhouse
In the living room above we have shown how successfully one family has solved the problem of a long narrow room. A few good pieces of furniture have been placed as apparently to reduce the length of the room; and well-proportioned rugs—one placed lengthwise and one at right angles to this—also tend to improve the appearance of the room.
The living room was once a kitchen in an old farmhouse. Only furniture of Colonial design should be used in a room of these architectural features, as the great open fireplace, the paneled woodwork, and the rough heavy ceiling beams bespeak that period.
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, May 6, 1914: Went to Watsontown this afternoon. Didn’t want to, for I would rather had seen some papering done.
Source: Rosie’s Vintage Wallpaper (Click on the link to see some additional hundred-year-old wallpapers.)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma—
Why didn’t you tell us?—Over the last 18 days, you weren’t just doing the spring housecleaning, you were also getting a room (the sitting room?) ready to be wallpapered!
I sympathize–it’s a lot of hard work to scrape off old wallpaper.
And, why were you sent on an errand to Watsontown? Were some additional wallpapering supplies needed?
—
Wow, Far Side of Fifty had it right! Sometimes I’m amazed when a reader has a better sense of what was happening in the Muffly household than I do. On May 1, Far Side of Fifty wrote the following comment:
They did some heavy cleaning back then. Taking everything out of a room and painting or papering it…freshening it all up.
I’m not very far ahead on doing posts right now, and I hadn’t realized until recently that in addition to doing the spring housecleaning, the Muffly’s were preparing to so some wallpapering.
I obviously thought that the term “spring housecleaning” had a narrower meaning that what it really had a hundred years ago.
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, May 5, 1914: Jimmie and I had a knock-out.
Jimmie Muffly, circa 1913
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Hmm. . . Grandma was 19, and Jimmie was her 8-year-old brother. What the heck could they have been fighting about? I’d think that with such a large age difference that they’d seldom fight.
Here are links to some previous posts about Jimmie Muffly that you might enjoy:
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, April 30, 1914: But we went today and got all we cared to carry home. It is quite a distance and my legs ache by this time.
Trailing Arbutus (Mayflower)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I’m guessing that Grandma and some of her friends picked lots of training arbutus. Two days prior to this entry she wrote:
Was going for trailing arbutus this afternoon, but the other girls didn’t have time to go, so it’s postponed til tomorrow.
It apparently took two days to actually get the group together to pick arbutus.
Trailing arbutus are also called mayflowers. Several years ago when Grandma wrote about gathering trailing arbutus, I found a description at The Write Way about what it was like to pick them. It’s still the best description I’ve ever seen, so I’m going to repeat it here:
I have such crisp memories of picking wild mayflowers with my brother. Scrounging around on the sun-splashed forest floor, moving decaying leaves with our bare hands to find a delicately scented flower smaller than a dime.
Trailing arbutus are not easy to find; their flowers tend to hide under the leaves. It takes quite a few flowers to make even a small bunch, but they were worth it.
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, April 29, 1914: <<no entry>>
Source; Milton Evening Standard (April 2, 1914)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
A hundred years ago today was one of the few days when Grandma didn’t write a diary entry. Since she didn’t write anything, I thought that I’d share a hundred-year-old article I recently came across when I was browsing through old microfilms of the Milton Evening Standard.
19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, April 27, 1914: Not worth the snap of your fingers.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Hmm. . . I don’t think I’ve ever heard that phrase. What does “not worth the snap of your finger” mean? Was Grandma feeling ill?. . depressed? . . . Was she bored? . . . Overworked?
The daintily flowered wallpaper and chair cushions, the plain rug and the curtains are all in various tones of lavender, while the two mahogany tables offer a pleasing bit of taste.
In the living room above we have shown how successfully one family has solved the problem of a long narrow room. A few good pieces of furniture have been placed as apparently to reduce the length of the room; and well-proportioned rugs—one placed lengthwise and one at right angles to this—also tend to improve the appearance of the room.
The living room was once a kitchen in an old farmhouse. Only furniture of Colonial design should be used in a room of these architectural features, as the great open fireplace, the paneled woodwork, and the rough heavy ceiling beams bespeak that period.
