Paying my respects to the Queen.

 

BBC News has been on every morning here these days since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II as they have had live coverage in Scotland and then today in Northern Ireland.

I am, quite simply, a royalist and Anglophile. 

And I have never been able to visit the UK so the history being revealed, the scenery, the somber ceremony, the bystanders being interviewed--especially the children--have all touched me.

Most of all, the services at the church in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as the first one in London, with their beautiful music and Scripture readings has been a balm to my spirit.

Recently, when our son Daniel and his family came to visit they brought me a thrift store copy of Sally Bedell Smith's book Elizabeth the Queen and I have been enjoying reading my way through it. 

I love this 1965 picture in the book of the Queen on horseback at Balmoral with one of her corgis. We had two corgis for many years because of Tasha Tudor but I loved knowing that corgis were a passion of Queen Elizabeth.

 

The other day RH stopped by a bookshop and bought me two of my four favorite British magazines, something he treats me to whenever he thinks about it and especially in December. 

I sat down to sink into the beautiful magazines full of my favorite interior designs and gardens and was thrilled to discover that the October issue of The English Home had a beautiful article, "Regal Retreats."

One of the homes shown is Highgrove in the Cotswolds, retreat of who was at the time the magazine was printed, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

 

I'll admit it, I am a staunch admirer of Charles and wish King Charles III a long healthy successful reign. 

And I have a copy on the way of Sally Bedell Smith's  Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life. 

As I finish writing this, Queen Elizabeth's casket is now leaving the Royal Norfolk AB on the way to Buckingham Palace for one final night. It is dark and raining there and I am very glad it is sunny here, even if the sun does show up that I badly need to dust. 

 

Women and their need to have a party, as does Mrs Dalloway

 

 

Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is known for her parties, known for being the consummate hostess. 

When her husband questions her about her newest party plan, she answers him:

Richard, it's all that I can do, give people one night in which everything seems enchanted, when all the women seem beautiful and all the men seem handsome and everyone is made to seem they're amusing.

 Putting all other themes of Mrs Dalloway aside, clearly Clarissa Dalloway is the quintessential hostess and I love that her wish is to make her guests shine, not herself.

In tidying all my bookshelves this winter I pulled out my old copy of my favorite Virginia Woolf novel expecting to love it the way I did when I was much younger. Within ten pages the stream of consciousness writing defeated me and I turned instead to finding Mrs Dalloway available to watch on Tubi where Vanessa Redgrave enchanted me as the older version of Clarissa Dalloway.

 

 

Ignoring the complex themes behind Clarissa needing to give a party, I fixated that cold winter night simply on the party itself with people arriving all dressed up and standing close to each other talking and eating special food and drinking festive drinks. You know, those things that pretty much disappeared during the two years of pandemic. 

And I began to miss it so very much!

Not that RH and I were ever accomplished hosts. We were always more of the "scruffy hospitality" philosophy made popular by an East Tennessee couple. 

But oh, the large cookouts we had at Valley View! Times when our big Adult Sunday School Class (and our daughter's Young Married Class) came in autumns and in springs to sit around the campfire and roast hotdogs over an open fire after exploring our 24 acres, with S'Mores for dessert and musical entertainment by guests in the Christian music industry.

We had birthday parties where teenagers hiked back to our waterfall and swung out over it on a rope. That experience halted for anyone except family after one teen girl fell and got the breath knocked out of her. 

Which makes me think of the G.I. Joe birthday party I had for Zack with a dozen little boys playing themed games. Was it my fault that one of them peeled his finger instead of the potato he was holding during the KP Duty game? His mother seemed to think so.

I even gave a fancy women's luncheon one time that took a month of preparation with three tables decorated with different Spode patterns from my collection. That party was anything but scruffy and I often pat myself on the back for having pulled it off, with help from my daughter and two daughters-in-law and the men in my family.

And over 26 years at Valley View there were large family parties galore. There still are large parties at Valley View but now they're hosted by our son and daughter-in-law, the new owners.

I'm truthfully past being able to pull off a large party now, even a scruffy one. But the desire to have them lives on and makes me wonder, is this an intrinsic need in most women?

I've noticed that even though I can no longer physically host big parties, I adore books and stories that include women (and men) preparing for special dinners--or brunches. I love it when bloggers write about their holiday parties or even birthday parties for a child.

And I keep on jotting down ideas for parties that will never happen. I can't help thinking that I must not be alone in this. Is it wired into our DNA to love having a party?

Or, as one of my favorite authors Phyllis McGinley wrote once, "I love to have given a party!" 

We did have a large family Christmas party last Christmas here at Home Hill. Anything but fancy. I served spaghetti, salad, and french bread. But oh, it was so much fun!

 

 And I miss it so! Even though any future ones might have to be catered.

Do you know what I mean?

Do you love having a party or having given a party?

Did you miss it during the shutdown? 

Is there just something in women where having a party is a necessity of life? 

Even when the world is not in a party mood?

Watch Mrs Dalloway if you get the chance. Or read the book, or both.

And give parties when you're young and able, for goodness' sake! Especially scruffy ones.

 

 

Seattle, Washington Fall Fashions, 1955

 

Mrs. Hoge Sullivan wears a Ben Reig suit of salt and pepper tweed while she rides the miniature railroad at the Woodland Park Zoo with her daughter Mary Lou. 

This was about all that Town & Country wrote about this beautiful woman in their 1955 August issue but the internet yielded much more. 

1) The fashion designer Ben Reig was called dean of the New York Couture Group. 

2) Her husband served in Africa and Italy during WW II. And he was the first manager of Seattle's Space Needle! 

3) I found an earlier picture on eBay that was no longer for sale of Mrs. J. Hoge Sullivan and her daughter Mary Lou! 

I love her swimsuit!

 

Mrs. Gordon Ingham wears a B. H. Wragg jumper ensemble of Shamokin wool at the Seattle Yacht Club. 

1) B. H. Wragg was famous at that time for its separates to be mixed and matched, the fabrics often designed by famous artists.

2) Upon the passing of our model above at the age of 77, The Seattle Times wrote about how she (then Annette Ingham Lobb) and Gordon Ingham met. Her father took her abroad "to discourage an undesirable suitor." 

The plot twisted: Young Gordon Ingham, a fellow passenger, proposed on Dal Lake in the Vale of Kashmir. She accepted. They stayed married until his death in 1988.

Gordon and Annette raised four sons and were active in many charitable causes. But what really intrigued me was that she was a prolific although unpublished poet. I love what Annette said:

I would like to have been a really good writer, but I know I am not. But I like to write, and so I do...it's good therapy.

And amen!

 

 Mrs. Thomas A. Davies is the great-granddaughter of one of Seattle's founders and is program director of the Seattle Art Museum Guild.  She's wearing a dressmaker suit of Lesur wool (one of the best quality fabrics of the 1960s).

I couldn't find anything else out about Mrs. Davies but there is plenty about her great-grandfather, David Thomas Denny, a member of the Denny Party that traveled by covered wagon to Oregon, and then by ship to Seattle, landing September 25, 1851.

 

 

Mrs. William L. Green is shown at the Seattle Flower Mart wearing a box-pleated suit of red wool by Henry Frechtel. I came to a dead end with Mrs. Green but Oh, how I would love to go to the Seattle Flower Mart! And Pinterest is full of models wearing beautiful Henry Frechtel designs.

 

I love the photo above! First of all that automobile. Look at all the leg room! Next, that suit!

Mrs. Lawrence H. Arnold arrives at Canlis Charcoal Broiler with her husband in a Packard Patrician. She wears British worsted by Irene. 

1) There was hardly a leading lady in Hollywood in the 1930s who was not dressed by Irene! And in the early 1960s Doris Day film Midnight Lace, that gorgeous black lace outfit was designed by Irene.

2) Canlis is Seattle's landmark fine dining destination, the most upscale dining experience there. It is still owned by the same family, in a midcentury-modern house. The "old-school posh" restaurant is temporarily closed of course but I got hungry just looking at pictures of the food plates on their website. 

3) Mr. Arnold died in 1962 of cancer and a library was donated in his memory, and that of his mother, to the Hutch, world known institute for cancer research. 

 

Mrs. Charles Callahan is at the Seattle Tennis Club wearing a casual tweed dress by Mollie Parnis. Parnis dressed two presidents' wives, Mamie Eisenhower and Lady Bird Johnson. 

 

 

Mrs. Walter P. Shiel, Jr., the former Barbara Jean Harlow, is watching the Kalakala Ferry at Coleman Dock. She is wearing a coat of Anglo tweed by Frank Gallant who designed coats and suits for Saks, Lord and Taylor, etc. I found Barbara Jean as a 12 year old in the 1940 census. 

 

Not a very good picture but I love the neckline of Mrs. Peter Barrett's cocktail dress of silk and rayon satin by Ceil Chapman that she is wearing at the Seattle Yacht Club. 

Ceil Chapman designed glamorous cocktail and party dresses in the 1940s to 1960s. She was Marilyn Monroe's favorite designer. She designed Elizabeth Taylor's trousseau in 1950 for her wedding to Conrad Hilton.

 

I'll end my three 1955 fashion posts from Town & Country with a dress for the young. Miss Sally Jensen and Mr. George Philip Koon are at the Olympic Hotel. Her ballgown is white lace over ombré shades of tulle by Howard Greer who designed for Katharine Hepburn. I found plenty of Koon family members in Seattle but nothing specifically for George. I did find a Sally Jensen in the 1940 census, which would have made her 18 in 1955. That sounds about right.

The magazine said this about Seattle in 1955:

It is a sleeves-up city which enjoys meeting new challenges and takes a fierce pride in solving its own problems without government assistance.

 I didn't make that up, folks. I promise. 

 

New York Fall Fashions, 1955

 Some of my favorite magazines from my collection of vintage women's magazines are the fashion mags...Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Town & Country. 

And now that I can only fantasize about dressing up and going somewhere, I love paging through the old magazines that showed the fashions of my mother and grandmother's past. 

When I looked through my 1955 Town & Country I was reminded of the wool suits my mother made, beautifully tailored.

These two young women are posed on the George Washington Bridge. Mrs. Serge Sarasin, on the left,  wears a tunic suit in City Tweed by Davidow. I found there are still beautiful vintage Davidow suits for sale online.

I have to admit to snooping on the internet when I find the names of the models in my old magazines. Partly because I love researching for its own sake and partly because I'm nosy curious. 

1955 was a time when women were introduced by their husband's name with a Mrs. in the front. I learned that Mrs. Sarasin was Sue C. Nelms before her marriage in 1952. I love her tunic suit and her pretty red purse and gloves.

I have a thing about gloves, wrote about them in a post here in "The Shorter the Sleeves, the Longer the Gloves."  

The woman on the right in the bridge photo is Mrs. John S. Radway, wearing a beautiful blue suit of British Linton tweed, carrying a matching coat. I wasn't able to find out more about her but Linton tweeds are still being produced in England.

The next two models are posed at The Cloisters in New York, home of Medieval art and the famous Unicorn tapestry. The Cloisters have been used for backdrop in many movies, including my friend Tammy's favorite, Portrait of Jennie.

 Jane B. Gillespie, above, wears a three-quarters length coat and matching skirt of Anglo tweed by William Devitz. I wish more of these fashion shots were in color because when I googled both Anglo fabrics and the designer William Devitz I found the most beautiful colors and vintage clothing for sale online. Alas, I could not find further news of Miss Gillespie online.

 

 I love the fitted look of this suit above of Pinehurst hand-woven fabric by Bellciano that Cynthia Brooks Towell wears. I couldn't trace Cynthia any further but I'm guessing she was petite as Bellciano was known for their Bellciette line for women under 5 foot, 5 inches.

Town & Country described this suit as a taileur, meaning a suit meant for town wear. I love that word!

 

Let me introduce you to Mrs. Charles A. Dana, Jr., shown at her New Canaan, CT home. She's wearing a John Barr tissue tweed suit. I couldn't find out what tissue tweed is but it sounds as if it would be very soft and comfortable. 

I drew a blank at the fashion designer but discovered that Mrs. Dana was the former Eleanor Waters Langhorne and she and Charles were married in 1951 at Park Avenue Methodist Church. And Mr. Dana was head of the Dana Foundation that contributed to many worthy causes including a cancer institute.

I wish the magazine had given the name of her beautiful dog!

 

Our last model is my favorite, look at that smile! 

She was described as being Mrs. Thomas Morgan Schriber, the former Holly Seelbach, chair of the New Canaan, Connecticut Junior Red Cross. 

She is wearing a coat of O'llegro by Claire McCardell. I found out that fashion designer Claire McCardell is credited with first creating American sportswear for women. She inspired many of today's top designers and believed that women's clothing should "be practical and sturdy as well as feminine."

I found Holly's obituary and her picture shows that beautiful smile.

 Evidently Hilde (Holly) Seelbach Henderson Schriber Rohde graduated from Wellesley, married a Mr. Henderson and had two children and then was widowed during WW II. In 1947 she married Thomas Morgan Schriber and they had two children, the youngest who must be the small son shown with her in the picture.

I was fascinated reading that Hilde (Holly) Rohde (her second husband had also passed away and she remarried a third time) co-owned The Yarn Tree in New Canaan "where she sold yarns, and designed and knit sweaters and needlepoint."

This lovely woman with the radiant smile passed away this past May 27, 2020, "quietly at her home in New Canaan."

Her story and her smile touched my heart.

There are two more main fall fashion stories in this 1955 issue of Town & Country that I want to post about this month, one about what young men wore to college then--oh, how the times have changed--and one about the women of a city that has been much in the news lately. 

Vintage Fall fashions are my favorite, that is until Christmas fashions come along. 

All Dressed Up

 

                                            [ad from Harper's Bazaar September 1942]

 

I'm all dressed up with no place to go.

      Even put on my favorite chapeau.

No church, no theater,

     No Frist Art Museum.

Can't visit Mamam and Papa,

     Not in this world, dear me.

So I'll fly away to Paris

     And join Armand and Reine-Marie.

I'm told they're wise as ever

     Via mon cher Louise.

Home sweet home is nice for PJs and jeans,

     But for really dressing up there's always Paree.

 

Wishing you all a good book and time to read it.

 

 

     

Concerning Blogging, and Quatre Epices

 Lately the world has been too much with me and in a desperate desire to find tranquility of mind and spirit, I'm pulling back my involvement in social media to a comfortable level. As a small part of this I'm suspending comments at both my blogs and, for an as yet undetermined time, will be posting only as a personal journal of my thoughts and interests.

[Tuppy thinks to herself] Seventy-seven. What had happened to the years? Old age seemed to have taken her unaware and totally unprepared. Tuppy Armstrong was not old. Other people were old, like one's own grandmother, or characters in books. She thought of Lucilla Eliot, in The Herb of Grace. The epitome, one would have thought, of a perfect matriarch.

                            from Under Gemini by Rosamunde Pilcher

I am now the same age as Tuppy and am examining how I want to spend the energy and hours I may have left. We live in unsettled times, to put it mildly, and owe it to ourselves and our loved ones to weigh how we want to spend precious time that will not always be there. 

One thing I don't want to spend my hours on anymore is elevated stress following the political story of the day on Facebook, or, God forbid, ever again participating in what Mrs. Minerva called, "tedious and unprofitable discussion...clear from the outset that neither side was going to budge an inch." 

Good grief, how such discussions drain one! 

Tuppy refers to Lucilla Eliot as truly old and maybe I am too because I agree with Lucilla in one of my favorite books, The Herb of Grace (American title: Pilgrim's Inn):

Lucilla knew always...that it was homemaking that mattered. Every home was a brick in the great wall of decent living that men erected over and over again as a bulwark against the perpetual flooding in of evil. But women made the bricks, and the durableness of each civilization depended upon their quality, and it was no good weakening oneself for the brick-making by thinking too much about the flood.

                      Elizabeth Goudge's The Herb of Grace/Pilgrim's Inn

I've come to realize that in this stage of my life I need to be careful to redeem the time (Ephesians 5:16). I will still try to see what's happening in my dear blog friends' lives during R & R time, how could I not? But I thought it only fair to warn you that I'm closing comments at both blogs in case you don't want to bother reading.

In order to have a few pictures here I'm including a recipe for one of my favorite seasonings, Quatre épices from James Beard's Love and Kisses and a Halo of Truffles. Note my own new truffle pig in the pictures!

   

Mix together 1 1/8 cups ground white pepper, 3 1/2 tablespoons ground nutmeg, 3 1/2 tablespoons ground ginger, and 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cloves. 

 Keep tightly sealed.

 Use with roasted and braised meats, stews, soups, sweet potatoes, gingersnaps or whatever your heart desires, because James would.

 

 

Sending love and kisses to you! God bless and keep you!

Dewena

Do not be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today...The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.

                       Exodus 14:13-14

 

 

 

 

I wish I'd asked more questions.

The pretty young woman standing in the middle in the photo below is my mother. She was sixteen then.

I love the expression on her face, so happy, so in love with life. I love her modest outfit and the relaxed but poised figure.

The photo was taken in Washington D.C. in 1941. I'm assuming the other two young women are friends of hers and the soldier is someone they posed with as they were seeing the sights. 

And I'm assuming that the young Dewena was  thrilled to be traveling there. A girl from a very small town in the South back then would be, don't you think? 

But I don't know for sure because I never asked her. 

My sisters and I lost our precious 95 year old mother recently. We're so glad that she is now in her heavenly home with her Lord and Savior, joining our father who went on before her. We wouldn't willingly keep her here, suffering on.

But we miss her so very much. 

I wish I had asked her so many more questions about all the old photographs I've been going through this past week. Asked and then written down more of the stories that she told me. 

I've written about my parents many times here and this week I went back and added a "Parents" label, separate from the larger "Family" label. 

She and my father were extraordinary people, part of that Greatest Generation that we're losing so many of every day. 

So many stories lost, not nearly enough of them written down, not nearly enough questions asked.

Write down as many as you can, dear friends and family.

Thank you so much to those of you who have already contacted me upon hearing the news of my mother's passing, some of you who have already left comments on my last post. And thank you to those of you who read this and leave them below. 

I wish you all could have known her.


 

Hello Again & A Followup Post

Hello dear friends and family! While I haven't posted here very much this past summer there is something about October arriving that makes me want to create more often on my blogs. 

All of your comments on my Labor Day post about the jobs you first held as a young person meant so much to me. I feel as if I know you a little better for it. 

If I recap some of those jobs here would you overlook that the pictures are tail-end of summer pics and not in any way reminding you of our beloved Autumn? Which has not actually showed up here in Nashville yet. We're still breaking records for high temps.

I was first hired as a shopping center sidewalk Easter Bunny and one commenter, Obscure, once had to don a Hello Kitty costume at her first job as cashier in an upscale supermarket. She did not say whether anyone tried to pull her tail. 

Melanie worked in her father's grocery store before a wide variety of later jobs, and Brenda worked in the same one that her mother had when she was her age. Sweet!  

Karen put the curly Q on the top of iconic Dairy Queen ice cream cones, and Vicki worked at the local Wee Tee Golf.

Both Lorrie and Madame Là-Bas had berry picking jobs, raspberries for one, blueberries for the other. And if these jobs were in the amazing climates where these women live now, that wouldn't be a bad job at all.

Many of you were babysitters but only one, Kim, had a paper route too. That was RH's first job, starting when he was eleven years old. 

And hurrah for the nice woman on his route who called his stepfather on the phone one bitterly cold snow and ice morning and demanded he come pick up little RH. She insisted it was too cold for him to be delivering papers on his bicycle that day. She's my hero!

Of all those who said babysitting was their first job, one babysitter's mother-of the-children also left a list of chores to be done. Tammy, Christy had one that did the same thing and she never went back. I mean, really!

Diana began as a timer in a lingerie factory while Sandy worked in one that made televisions. Later on Diana worked for NBC in the same field as our Christy is in for CBS. I'd like to match those two up for lunch!

Sheri's first real job was a stenographer, and Beach Gypsy was a waitress.

 Poppy was a hostess at Kentucky Fried Chicken but as a senior in high school was chosen to read announcements on the loudspeaker. If you've ever heard her voice on Instagram you'll know why they chose her.

Carla started her sons out working on their grandparents' dairy farm when they were little boys -- and now one of them is proudly serving in the defense of his country!

Cathy packed things to be mailed out at a relgious store, which made me think of my first post-high school job that was typing things up to be mailed from a religious publishing company. I hope she was as lucky as I was.

Much earlier than Cathy, I'm sure, my workplace was as far from the Mad Men 1960s office atmosphere as was possible. I never saw any male executive make a pass at a girl working for them. Women were treated with courtesy by the men, who were all gentlemen.

I know you're waiting for the "but" or the "except" --there isn't any. Squeaky clean. Whether we wanted it that way or not.

My last two pictures are of foraged wild stems that RH cut last week, my attempt to bring a little Autumn feeling into our house that is as yet still bare of pumpkins and gourds. My annual trip to Nashville Farmer's Market must wait until we at least drop 10 or 15 degrees outside.

But the glorious red gladiolas are always a summer must for me, and this year I only remembered them as summer was ending. 

Thank you for visiting me! Are you decorated for fall or Halloween yet?

 

A Tudor Vegetable Garden and A Pause

I have been captivated by this illustration of a Tudor vegetable garden ever since I saw it in my 1935 Woman's Home Companion. 

I'm familiar with Tudor Knot Gardens but I've never seen a picture of vegetables planted in this style except for those dreamy but luxurious vegetable gardens in Monty Hall's French Gardens. 

One thing I love about my vintage women's magazines is that they are full of the most beautiful paintings done by the great illustrators of those days, many who went on to have their work in museums and art galleries. 

This illustration is by Harrie Wood and the article it illustrated was written by Marni Davis Wood. Related? I couldn't find out but the illustration is of her actual Tudor vegetable garden. 

She describes each and every planting in it but admitted that the one drawback was how to keep the garden symmetrical when they pulled a head of lettuce. Key to the garden was "intensive cultivation and succession planting of crops."

I love it for its artistic beauty but I also love it because it is so beautifully tidy. Which is strange because I prefer gardens that are English cottage garden blowsy.

But don't you think that if Marie Kondo had a vegetable garden it would look much like this?

I guess I love tidy gardens and blowsy gardens. I even love wild gardens. In this 2 1/2 acres surrounding our house, there is a big patch I asked RH not to mow and so many unusual wild things (weeds?) have grown there. But I would not want our whole yard and garden to be wild. 

 A certain amount of weeding must be done, both in our gardens and in our lives so that the terribly paralyzing feeling of being overwhelmed is addressed.

And so, I'm giving myself permission to pause posting here at Dewena's Window for a while to pull some weeds in my life and tidy up a bit.

This is only a pause, God willing. And I'll still be visiting a couple of blog friends each day.

A woman must find time for a little inspiration. A whole day cannot be devoted to weeding, can it?

Of course not! 

[RH would never forgive me if I didn't make it clear that I'm speaking of weeding figuratively as he is the one who does the actual weeding in the yard!] 



 

Furs Again, Princess Marina of Greece, Mama in Greece

On November 3, 2016, I wrote a post here called "The Shorter the Sleeves, the Longer the Gloves," and had a photo of myself wearing my mother's silver mink stole on my honeymoon many decades ago. 

When I found the photograph above, another one RH took of me on our honeymoon, it reminded me that I had intended to do a followup discussion of furs. With the move back to Tennessee not long after that it never got written.

What better time for it than now during the bitterly cold weather across much of the U.S. and Canada?

In comments at the old post, here, many friends wrote of still wearing fur coats or jackets in cold weather, especially ones from consignment stores even if they might not buy new ones now. 

One woman even wrote that she had once lived in the Yukon and wore fur, where I would guess it makes not just perfect sense to wear them but good plain horse sense also. I imagine there may have been many women in the Chicago area who wore theirs this week, if they ventured outside. 

Deborah of The Beautiful Matters wrote that she had some fur collars she loves found at consignment stores and I thought of her when I spotted this one at a local antique mall after Christmas that was 50% off and cost me a big $10.

I could not resist that bargain and it feels so soft and warm around my neck and reminds me of the mouton fur collars my girlfriends and I wore in high school with sweater sets and form-fitting wool skirts with kick-pleats. We really dressed up for school back then.

I don't know if I'll ever get up my nerve to wear it anywhere but if I do I think I'll buy a piece of soft lining satin to line it with. There's even a little hook and eye at the neckline that is broken so I need to replace that.

Before you ask where is a picture of me wearing it or my mother's mink stole now, here it is...

                                     Ha!

And that's all you're going to see of me in it for now because a jillion attempted selfies did nothing but show how frizzy my freshly shampooed hair was and that I badly needed to visit a professional makeup artist first.

I splurged on a good haircut in downtown Nashville a couple of weeks ago so I will show you pictures the stylist took of me afterwards, even though lipstick was all I'd taken time for that day.

Why can't I blow dry my hair that smoothly? I've decided that RH needs to go to hair salon school so he can do it every morning for me. And learn to be a makeup artist. Don't you think he should do that?

Then I could wear my mother's 60-year-old mink stole almost as elegantly as Princess Marina of Greece did in the picture below in 1934 in Vogue magazine when she was about to be married to H. R. H. Prince George of England.

Her fur is an ermine cape from Molyneux, who also designed her wedding gown. Isn't it gorgeous?

I treasure the old Vogue magazines in my collection and can spend hours reading every single word in them, even the advertisements, and swooning over the beautiful clothes and furs. 

After reading the article about the princess, I talked to Greek-Canadian girlfriend Poppy about her and she told me lots of interesting things about this princess of Greece and Denmark who after her marriage was a beloved member of the British Royal Family until she died in 1963. (Poppy, I could not find the notes I took that day and if you happen to read this, please add in what you remember!)

I wish so much that I had a photo of my mother wearing her mink stole but my sisters and I couldn't find a single one of her in it for this post. We still remember how exciting it was when our father surprised Mama with it and how perfectly elegant she looked in it, the silver fur lovely with her hair that was dark as a raven's breast.

Another surprise came to Mama much later in life when her sister invited her on a Mediterranean cruise. On it she had the joy of visiting Greece herself. I have a copy of her itinerary and read it again today.

She arrived in Athens in October of 1997 aboard the Orient Lines' the Ocean Majesty, which I understand is now operated by a German cruise line. 

She and her sister Marty toured Athens for two days and then went back to the ship for ports of call at Delos and Mykonos and then on to Santorini. They also traveled to Rhodes and to Kusadasi and then on to Istanbul.

Here is a photo of her at Santorini...

I'm so grateful that my dear mother, the first Dewena, who I was named for, was given the opportunity for this trip of a lifetime by her sister. What a great time they had with lots of stories to tell us!

My mother had four sisters and they were all very close, seeing each other as often as they could. That's when the fun really happened. Oh, those sister parties at Myrtle Beach! Only Mama, the oldest of the five girls, and June, the baby sister, are are here with us now, the three middle girls now in their heavenly home. 

Here is Mama sitting next to her mother, with three of her four sisters, celebrating my grandmother's birthday. 

I've thought a lot about these beautiful women while writing this post. I grew up in the elegant age of the 1940s, 1950s and early 60s and remember how beautiful my mother and aunts were, dressed up in their finest. 

Whatever our view of wearing fur is now, we all must admit that the early part of the 20th century was certainly a glamorous age, wasn't it?

I never could see why women could be seduced with jewels, but, oh, I'm sorry for those who are tempted too far by furs! I should like to be swathed in them.

Agnes Sligh Turnbull (1941)

I don't care what they say: I love fur; I read National Enquirer; I rarely recycle; I think Prince Charles and Camilla deserve to be happy.

Julia Reed in an interview on

wowowow.com