Don't Give Your New Bride The Vapours!

Ah! The Victorian Age. A time when the the goal of the young Victorian woman was to be a useful, engaging and ornamental member of society through the acquirement of the arts and graces. And to marry! Attracting a man by a dainty habit, perhaps, or a roguish eye charmed by a graceful form and carriage. My heart be still. Until now she has contented herself and enjoyed the blessed privileges of a girl in the domicile of her mother but now she is ready to venture into an experience to which she is totally uninformed and blissfully ignorant. Mother dear certainly didn't tell her. She may have hinted at an exalted bonding, an intimacy of two natures perhaps. But that's it. The rest is a complete surprise.

So she spends her long engagement filling her hope chest with linens, nightgowns, intimate underthings, handkerchiefs and then finally the big day arrives.

A blushing and virginal Elvira Cathreena Winsome Findley is wed to Mr. Thurston Edward Alphonse Beauregard IV and is swept away for a three month honeymoon abroad. But the ship doesn't sail until tomorrow and at the Quintessimal Hotel Missus Elvira Findley Beauregard is carried into the bridal suite. Her husband whispers in her ear and she replies: You're going to do WHAT with WHAT?

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This is where a copy of "Maidenhood And Motherhood"by John D. West, M.D. (Copyright 1886) comes in very handy. Not for the new missus though. Although the subject of the wedding night is alluded to in the book on several occasions it completely ignores the part about "You're going to do What with What?" So, the bride should bring along her copy, sit the new Mister down at the tea table and read him the chapter on Physical and Moral Effects of Excess. Zero in on the paragraph that reads:

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"Sometimes the young husband inflicts upon the newly made wife, whom he has so recently pledged himself to cherish and protect, very grave physical injuries from which long years of skillful treatment may not entirely free her. A case in point may not be amiss: It is that of a young woman, apparently blessed with all the charms of youth, beauty and health. She was wooed won and eventually married to a young man who had lost a former wife in death. Immediately subsequent to the marriage, the pair started on the conventional wedding tour, which in this instance, lasted only a fortnight. At the end of this time they returned home, but alas, the young wife was a hopeless imbecile, a dithering idiot - a victim to her husband's unrestrained impetuosity."

Lordy! The pour innocent girl - like a lamb to the slaughter. Returned to her doting mother just a figment of the robust, ill advised, uninformed person who left the household 14 days beforehand.

A lesson to you mother's out there: if you cannot, due to your own delicate nature explain the stork and the cabbage patch to your daughters, at least make sure that Sirilla the upstairs maid is instructed to let her know a thing or two! Just say to Sirella: And, if you don't, missy, I shall see to it that randy Tommy Perkins in the milk house is moved to the farm up at Glinsburry. I know what you've been up to, now don't I???

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Before we leave this lovely nostalgic chit-chat, let me clarify that Victorian ailment "The Vapors"

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The English version is The Vapours" Just like color and colour. Cool.

The vapors is not a case of flatulence. No, it's not. Is not! Iiiiiiisssssssss NOT! Lalalalalala I can't heeeere youuuuu!

It is used to describe a hysterical or nervous condition of a woman, sometimes caused by a exhalation of vapors within a organ which will affect the mental or physical being of a woman. Men don't get vapors. It is a woman thing. Probably associated with PMS, postpartum depression, having to listen to Tom Cruise say that a woman should just get over it.

For your convenience I have included a picture that describes what may happen in extreme cases of the vapors when, for example, the husband has a case of morbid flatulence and won't leave the room forthwith.