Diminish your calves

Precepts for the Guidance of a Daughter

Welcome to the 53rd issue of the Lists of Note newsletter. I had to take a break; thanks for bearing with me.

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Elizabeth Gaskell (Photo: Wikimedia)

Born in Chelsea in 1810, Elizabeth Gaskell became one of the Victorian era’s most celebrated novelists thanks to books that included Mary Barton, North and South, and Cranford. She was also a close friend of Charlotte Brontë and wrote her first biography. In 1832, Gaskell married a Unitarian minister, William Gaskell, and together they brought up four daughters. It was with those girls in mind, and with tongue in cheek, that she wrote this list of advice.

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Precepts for the Guidance of a Daughter

1. Remember Evelyn was not the first Norman King of England.

2. Wash your hands.

3. When you have washed them, hold a book in them.

4. Diminish your calves.

5. Pluck your arms.

6. Don’t have the same thing said of you that was said of Master Philip.

7. Get up early, but not too early.

8. Talk German so fast that no one can ascertain whether you speak grammatically or no.

9. Don’t gobble; it turns maidens and turkey-cocks purple.

10. Remember John Still.

11. Don’t talk like Scott and Adsheads’ about young men’s dress.

12. Forget ties and studs for one little week.

13. Don’t swear.

14. Assume the power of reading, if you have it not.

15. Hold your book right way up. N.B. you may know which is the right way by examining at what end of a page the numbers occur. Where the numbers are that is the top; to be held away from you.

16. Not to make a sequence.

17. Not to leave your room like a hay-field, of which the grass is gowns & brushes.

18. Not to take pocket-handkerchiefs for articles of virtue.

Altogether to conduct yourself as becomes the daughter of E. C. Gaskell.