Program One

Welcome Back
to 1899

"A Taste of 1899" is Donna's tribute to the gilded age as America moved west geographically, upward intellectually, and in circles morally. 1899 was a time of transition from rural to urban, from person-power to machine power and from simple to complex. In the face of such progress, the old styles of everything from medicine to corsets had to reinvent themselves or fall out of fashion.

From the even greater complexity of The Second Millennium, many people long to return to the first days of the twentieth century in its sweet simplicity. Donna transports you back 117 years to give you a literary-flavored taste of everyday Victorian life with all its problems and pleasures.

You will be able to see for yourself whether the turn of the last century was a time of halcyon days or halitosis nights as you glimpse the lives of ordinary people and relive the games and pastimes that gave the late Victorians the first middle class of people with enough leisure to seek diversions and entertainments.

About Mrs. McBustle..

To create this living portrait of a Victorian woman of a "certain" class and of a "certain" age, I have used more than three-hundred sources.

My goal is to celebrate the past as we of the present find ourselves in the second decade of the new millennium. I offer you a peek into everyday life among the energetic and influential "new" middle class.

Be warned that just as we take for granted the truth of the world as we know it, so did our ancestors. But their "truth" was very different from our own. Mrs. McB. sees life colored by the attitudes, superstitions, expectations and beliefs that framed her world--how could we expect her to do otherwise?

Mrs. McB., who believes herself to be up-to-date and progressive, seems quaintly humorous--not to mention ignorant and politically incorrect--to modern people. From four generations later, we may need to be a bit tolerant of her self-righteousness because we possess vast knowledge of science, medicine and the wonders of the electronic age that were hidden to her Victorian mind.

Victorian Verity
Marguerite McNair
Jessie Benton Fremont
Speaking
Dates
Land and
Locomotives
E-Mail

Program Three

No Footstomping or Tobacco Spitting Allowed

In her presentation on music Donna leads the audience in song and dance through the ten decades of popular music that reflect the boisterous exuberance and the tragic turmoil of the 1800s. In the 19th Century the United States changed dramatically as we swapped agricultural past for mechanized future while we multiplied in population fourteen times and expanded in land mass by eleven times.

Somehow we survived continuous strife including four major wars. We put away forever the barbarism of slavery.  Popular song and dance in the 19th century, true to all music for all times, gave us common humanity to ease our sorrow and celebrate our common joy.

Come back with me to 1899. In Mrs. McB's world, for well-to-do city folks, electric lights were just beginning to replace gas jets--which had only twenty years earlier replaced candles and kerosene lamps.

Hers was a time when the earliest child labor laws reduced the working day for children under twelve years of age to a mere 10 hours a day. Smoke from coal-fired factories so blackened the air that residents had to use artificial light at high noon on a sunny day. Local streets were flowing or rutted mud for three-fourths of every year.

Shopgirls made 6 cents an hour. Trousers were called "Unwhisperables." Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, invented cornflakes in 1896 because he believed that a bland diet would reduce unhealthy sexual desire. Candy makers used arsenic to color their confections green, and morphine was the key ingredient used to calm tots in Winslow's Baby Syrup. Welcome back to 1899.

 

And now, Mrs. McB has prepared a program especially for gardeners. Mrs. McB hopes your garden club will invite this Victorian Grande Dame to entertain your garden club with her...

Program Two

Secrets of Love and Beauty from the Victorian Garden

Before plastic surgery, before botox, before Helena Rubenstein and Estee Lauder were---? Mrs. McB knows and would be delighted to share her wisdom with your group. Let Mrs. McBustle suggest old uses for your horticultural harvest which you are apt to find quite new and perhaps a bit shocking. Return to the days before the turn of the Twentieth Century and the fables, foibles and fun of an earlier era. You may even discover what Oscar Wilde meant in A Woman of No Importance when he wrote, The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a Garden. It ends with "Revelations."

Come Frolic on the Fringe of FEAR !

Follow the Red Horseman link to learn about a delightfully deft and daffy discourse on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And what a deal! During these days when everyone is looking for a bargain, Mrs. McBustle throws in a fifth horseman for free. You don't even need a money-saving coupon.

Lincoln
Wit and Wisdom