Tag: historical

Marriages for such beauty wrapped in wealth is determined by men. Speaking to a male outside her family required permit from dame or sire. Her friends are her sisters. Brothers are hastily dispatched to unisex schools to keep the separation secure. Coming of age holidays become showcase moments for the coming-out parade to join society, an advertisement of a lady

  She had a face like porcelain gently obscured with puffed powder. Eyes always slanted down as if contact would melt brick and dissolve the dirt beneath. The hat was mandated so as not to tempt men with long hair. Hat pins were the fashion, bustles as necessary as a lace handkerchief in the brocade and bead handbag.  

    She wore lilac taffeta in rainbow arches and layers aswirl with the curve of her hips and legs totally covered and never publically spoken of, only imagined. Breast was a profane word used only by physicians in dim gas lit closed rooms. Children were fed in secret, a more and code that still exists as if a breast

She walked in high topped cream shoes fastened with a strange device few would recognize from our days of velcro few from those times would identify as a fastenable item. Her step might err and glance horse droppings, the hem hiked to protect hand made lace.  

The street appeared at dawn, spread with a soft alluring morning hour’s gleam upon well worn brick, no longer pristine, historically the place for wheels and hooves. The alley’s fate was to see olden lovers alight from carriages, bankers and investors striding forward gently in high hats, chimney sweeps and lamp lighters in worker’s caps and boots as use-worn as

She accepts the hand of her escort and enters the great staircase that ascends to their box at the opera. Glittering like a single diamond, or strings of pearls at hidden throat, she dangles at the ears insured to the hilt. The poor are not allowed to see her except by an importunity that lasts the impoverished sight thief until