Vintage ad for Jays Mourning Warehouse

Decoration Notes

It is not wise to copy some of the city fashions; for instance, one fashion followed in the city regarding windows. I call it “casket fashion.” In some streets of our great cities the windows from the first floor to the roof are draped with two sets of curtains and window shades of the purest white; the curtains are looped stiffly back with pure white satin ribbons. On looking at them my first impression is that there is a death in the house and that it is an infant or young person. I cannot help fancying that I smell funeral flowers. The casket-like draping of the windows is horrible and sends a chill through the frame of one who loves color and warmth. If white must be used, let it have a creamy tone, the deeper the better, and do have ecru or buff holland shades, and not dead-white, next to the glass. Avoid, also, the white satin ribbons.

Vintage Dancing Death Illustration From Jugend (Youth), a German publication that featured many famous Art Nouveau artists and was the source of the term "Jugendstil" ("Jugend-style"), the German version of Art Nouveau. Click the image to download a higher resolution version that you can use as clip art.

The People of the Woods

By Carrie Myer

The wind that sways the cedar limbs,
This bright and warm November day,
Is like the summer breeze that skims
O’er tranquil waves—yet seems to say,
November mourns in chilling moods
The buried people of the woods.

When April on her gauzy wings
O’er hill and valley lightly sailed,
There came a few fair, fragile things,
And birds, and bees, and children hailed
Their coming with wild delight,
And vestal stars rejoiced at night.

And when the darker eyes of May
Glanced o’er the ruby walls of morn,
And gleamed upon the golden day,
A brighter, hardier race was born;
To forests lone they came in bands
As numerous as the yellow sands.

Here some were clad in creamy white,
And there in robes of purple hue,
And some with crimson tints were bright,
While others wore the heavenly blue;
And all were glad that overhead
The emerald roof so grandly spread.

All through the glorious summer-time
These gentle people every-where
’Mid Nature’s soft and rudest chime,
Bowed gaily to the loving air–
They danced in gloomy solitudes,
The merry people of the woods.

But one, whose stealthy footfall brings
To human hearts grief, awe, and fear–
The leveler of earthy kings–
Who claims as his the humblest here
Looked in upon their homes of peace,
And said their reveling should cease.

Then day by day their songs of mirth
Bent more and more with sadder tones,
Until the hills that gave them birth,
Re-echoed back but sighs and moans;
October sang in mournful moods,
The stricken people of the woods.

I watched the languid twilight spread
O’er hazy skies her argent wings,
And muse on them, the lovely dead,
So frail amid all fragile things!
With each departing year I sigh,
That thus the beautiful should die.

And now when Mem’ry’s chain unwinds
On quiet eves each silken link,
That to the past my spirit binds,
I pause, and scarcely dare to think–
’Mid shrieking winds and rushing floods,
We’ll miss the people of the woods!

Vintage Clip Art Illustration of an Argument.

The Desolated

By Hattie Boomer Barber, Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine, November 1859

Too late I learned to prize thy worth,
Too late thy faithful heart did prove;
And now through all this desert earth
I’d journey pilgrim for such love.
But I shall never meet again
That form my fickleness hath slain;
Beneath the stars, so coldly bright,
He sleeps the dreamless sleep to-night.

Sadly, I often linger here
Till midnight slumbers on the hill,
And pour the unavailing tear,
Hopeless and unavailing still.
His heart will never know again
The bitterness of human pain;
And, envious of the unconscious rest,
My weary brow his grave has press’d.

They deem me heartless, still, and cold
As when my smile was false to thee;
But wasting grief, with tortuous fold,
Has wound around the heart so free.
Oh, might my sorrows pray thee now
To seal forgiveness on this brow,
I’d drown in tears a life of pain,
To win thy love’s pure faith again!

Antique CDV Photograph of Two Sisters Holding Hands Brother. Photo Credit: MissMary.com

The ghost of a beloved departed mother returns to console her children, who are habitually beaten and abused by their evil stepmother in this Gothic Victorian poem.

A Folk-Lore Legend

By Catharine Allan, Peterson’s Magazine, 1884

“Come back to us mother,” the little ones cried;
Come back to us, mother dear.”
And they flung themselves on the grave at her side:
“There’s nobody loves us here.”

“The stepmother beats us, and starves us for food;
Come back to us, mother dear.
Do you slumber so deep—oh! We’ll be so good—
So deep that you do not hear?”

The mother she came in the dead of the night,
She washed them, and combed their hair,
And gave them to eat of the wheaten bread white,
And dressed them in garments fair.

They climbed in her lap, and they sang at her feet,
They kissed her with laughter gay.
She sang them to sleep with a lullaby sweet,
Till cock-crow called her away.

And though ev’ry night they lie smiling in bed,
With tears on their lashes fair,
Think not they are sad—they are happy instead:
Their mother is with them there!

About the Photograph: There is a hidden sadness to this antique photograph. The young girl on the left looks sickly to my eyes. There was no information on the reverse of this CDV. We’ll never know how these anonymous children fared, but hopefully they had a better life than the poor children in this Victorian poem.

Gothic Victorian Clip Art Devil and Fallen Woman

Why Are You Weeping, Sister?

Why are you weeping, Sister?
Why are you sitting alone?

I’m bent and gray
And I’ve lost the way!
All my tomorrows were yesterday!
I traded them off for a wanton’s pay.
I bartered my graces for silks and laces
My heart I sold for a pot of gold–
Now I’m old.

Why did you do it, Sister,
Why did you sell your soul?

I was foolish and fair and my form was rare!
I longed for life’s baubles and did not care!
When we know not the price to be paid, we dare.
I listened when Vanity lied to me
And I ate the fruit of the Bitter Tree–
Now I’m old.

Why are you lonely, Sister?
Where have your friends all gone?

Friends I have none, for I went the road
Where women must harvest what men have sowed
And they never come back when the field is mowed.
They gave the lee of the cup to me
But I was blind and would not see–
Now I’m old.

Where are your lovers, Sister,
Where are your lovers now?

My lovers were many but all have run
I betrayed and deceived them every one
And they lived to learn what I had done.
A poisoned draught from my lips they quaffed
And I who knew it was poisoned, laughed–
Now I’m old.

Will they not help you, Sister,
In the name of your common sin?

There is no debt, for my lovers bought.
They paid my price for the things I brought.
I made the terms so they owe me naught.
I have no hold for ‘t was I who sold.
One offered his heart, but mine was cold–
Now I’m old.

Where is that lover, Sister?
He will come when he knows your need.

I broke his hope and I stained his pride.
I dragged him down in the undertide.
Alone and forsaken by me he died.
The blood that he shed is on my head
For all the while I knew that he bled–
Now I’m old.

Is there no mercy, Sister,
For the wanton whose course is spent?

When a woman is lovely the world will fawn.
But now when her beauty and grace are gone,
When her face is seamed and her limbs are drawn.
I’ve had my day and I’ve had my play.
In my winter of loneliness I must pay–
Now I’m old.

What of the morrow, Sister?
How shall the morrow be?

I must feed to the end upon remorse.
I must falter alone in my self-made course.
I must stagger alone with my self-made cross.
For I bartered my graces for silks and laces
My heart I sold for a pot of gold–
Now I’m old.

By Herbert Kaufman in Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls, or, War on the White Slave Trade, 1911

Perhaps you can find a good use for this vintage Victorian engraving, a Gothic bit of clip art as ever there was.

Rose Coghlan

I have seen the infant sinking down, like a stricken flower, to the grave—the strong man fiercely breathing out his soul upon the field of battle—the miserable convict standing upon the scaffold, with a deep curse quivering on his lips—I have viewed death in all his forms of darkness and vengeance with a tearless eye,—but I never could look on woman, young and lovely woman, fading away from the earth in beautiful and uncomplaining melancholy, without feeling the very fountains of life turned to tears and dust. Death is always terrible—but, when a form of angel beauty is passing off to the silent land of the sleepers, the heart feels that something lovely in the universe is ceasing from existence, and broods, with a sense of utter desolation, over the lonely thoughts, that come up like specters from the grave to haunt our midnight musings.

Two years ago, I took up my residence for a few weeks in a country village in the eastern part of New England. Soon after my arrival I became acquainted with a lovely girl, apparently about seventeen years of age. She had lost the idol of her pure heart’s purest love, and the shadows of deep and holy memories were resting like the wing of death upon her brow. I first met her in the presence of the mirthful. She was indeed a creature to be worshiped—her brow was garlanded with the young year’s sweetest flowers—her yellow locks were hanging beautifully and low upon her bosom—and she moved through the crowd with such a floating and unearthly grace, that the bewildered gazer almost looked to see her fade into the air, like the creation of some pleasant dream. She seemed cheerful and even gay; yet I saw that her gaiety was but the mockery of her feelings. She smiled, but there was something in her smile which told that its mournful beauty was but the bright reflection of a tear—and her eye-lids, at times, closed heavily down, as if struggling to repress the tide of agony that was bursting up from her heart’s secret urn. She looked as if she could have left the scene of festivity, and gone out beneath the quiet stars, and laid her forehead down upon the fresh, green earth, and poured out her stricken soul, gush after gush, till it mingled with the eternal fountain of life and purity.

Days and weeks passed on, and that sweet girl gave me her confidence, and I became to her as a brother. She was wasting away by disease. The smile upon her lip was fainter, the purple veins upon her cheek grew visible, and the cadences of her voice became daily more week and tremulous. On a quiet evening in the depth of June, I wandered out with her a little distance in the open air. It was then that she first told me the tale of her passion, and of the blight that had come down like mildew upon her life. Love had been a portion of her existence. Its tendrils had been twined around her heart in its earliest years; and, when they were rent away, they left a wound which flowed till all the springs of her soul were blood. “I am passing away,” said she, “and it should be so. The winds have gone over my life, and the bright buds of hope and the sweet blossoms of passion are scattered down and lie withering in the dust, or rotting away upon the chill waters of memory. And yet I cannot go down among the tombs without a tear. It is hard to bid farewell to these dear scenes, with which I have held communion from childhood, and which, from day to day, have caught the colour of my life and sympathised with its joys and sorrows. That little grove where I have so often strayed with my burried Love, and where, at times, even now, the sweet tones of his voice seem to come stealing around me till the whole air becomes one intense and mournful melody—that pensive star, which we used to watch in its early rising, and on which my fancy can still picture his form looking down upon me, and beckoning me to his own bright home: every flower and tree, and rivulet, on which the memory of our early love has set its undying seal, have become dear to me, and I cannot, without a sigh, close my eyes upon them for ever.”

I have lately heard, that the beautiful girl, of whom I have spoken, is dead. The close of her life was calm as the falling of a quiet stream—gentle as the sinking of the breeze, that lingers, for a time, around a bed of withered roses, and then dies “as ‘twere from very sweetness.”

It cannot be said that earth is man’s only abiding place. It cannot be, that our life is a bubble cast up by the Ocean of Eternity, to float a moment upon its waves and sink into darkness and nothingness. Else why is it, that the high and glorious aspirations, which leap like angels from the temple of our hearts, are for ever wandering abroad unsatisfied? Why is it, that the stars, which “hold their festivals around the midnight throne,” are set above the grasp of our unlimited faculties—for ever mocking us with their unapproachable glory? And finally, why is it, that bright forms of human beauty are presented to our view and then taken from us—leaving the thousand streams of our affections to flow back in an Alpine torrent upon our hearts? We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth. There is a realm, where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread out before us like the islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beautiful beings, which here pass before us like visions, will stay in our presence for ever. Bright creature of my dreams—in that realm I shall see thee again. Even now thy lost image is sometimes with me. In the mysterious silence of midnight, when the streams are glowing in the light of the many stars, that image comes floating upon the beam that lingers around my pillow, and stands before me in its pale, dim loveliness, till its own quiet spirit sinks like a spell from heaven upon my thoughts, and the grief of years is turned to dreams of blessedness and peace.

[Hartford Review]

Story from The Lady’s Album, early 19th century.

Image: Rose Coghlan, Actress (1851-1932) photograph by Sarony, NY