Well. This is not your average Victorian book of love poems and domestic bliss. Edited by Cecil Raynor and published in 1896, The Spinster's Scrip is a compilation of quips and quotes about the horrors of married life, one for each day of the year (much like a daily devotional to bitterness). Here are a couple:
January Second:
"Is Courtship bliss? Marriage is blister."
-unknown.
May Twenty-Ninth:
"A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
-Dr. Johnson
and, last but not least, October Thirty-First:
(regarding the fate of the married)
"They die so slowly that none call it murder."
-unknown.
My favorite thing about this particular book is the inscription on the front end page:
Who was Billy? Who was Fraggy? Best wishes...do I detect just the faintest hint of sarcasm in Fraggy's penmanship, a touch of anger in the underlinings? Perhaps she was Billy's jilted bride-to-be and this book her answer to his finding someone else. If so, I hope she kept the ring. Good riddance, Girl. Better to learn the truth now before you've been hitched to his unfaithful sorry--
...not that I'm bitter.
1 comment:
This is a fantastic, I often wonder of inscripted book like that. Fairly wry view of marriage, thank goodness women are treated "a bit" better today.
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