‘Plus ça Change, Plus c’est la Même Chose’: Domesticity

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Pot of pink roses, reminding me of my fieldtrips to Rutherglen and Lanark this week

Not long ago, I was bought a copy of The Feminist Art of Walking, by Morag Rose (Pluto Press, 2025). It falls into the category of Gender/Urban Studies, which certainly isn’t in my usual ballpark, but I’m often pleasantly surprised to read something completely different, so I dived in. Did you know that Rose established the Loiterers Resistance Movement (LRM)? You do now.

After my two ‘fieldwork’ outings to Rutherglen and Lanark this week, both entailing a fair bit of walking, it occurred to me that my own walks were a kind of feminist walking, insofar as I was commemorating Rose Smith, a forgotten woman composer who was born in Lanark, grew up and spent her early adulthood in Glasgow, then spent most of her adult life in Rutherglen – and also her mother, the ‘Lanarkshire Poetess’. (Not a bad title for an Englishwoman who had lived in Ireland before the family moved to Lanark!)

As I walked from the cemetery down to the cenotaph in Rutherglen on Monday, I pondered that Rose would have walked over the same ground – although it would have looked very different. Likewise, her steam train would have traversed essentially the same line between Glasgow and Lanark that I travelled yesterday, and I walked on streets that she, her mother and siblings must have used daily. I even walked past the spot where their house stood. Too late, I realised I could have gone and looked at the Episcopal church that they attended. I glimpsed it, just up the road from the Library, I think, but I was too slow on the uptake and didn’t realise that was it. I was more focused on getting to the cemetery without getting drenched en route! Rose had stood at both those gravesides. Mary-Ann was remembered on the Trumpet Major’s headstone, even though she’d actually died whilst staying with a daughter in England.

Today, however, I’ve stayed at home. It’s not a ‘working’ day, but I didn’t feel inclined to make another expedition. (I need to visit the National Library of Scotland, but I can’t in all honesty justify a trip to Edinburgh when I’m going there next week in any case.)

So, I baked, washed floors and dealt with laundry. (This is the reality of semi-retirement!) I wondered if Mary-Ann or Rose made their own bread, or if they’d have laughed as they informed me that there was a perfectly good baker on the high street? They certainly wouldn’t have had a bread-machine to make the dough for rolls, or a packet-mix for an experimental batch of muffins! (Spoiler alert: they came out fine, but the ones I make from scratch are a nicer texture. And my recipes make more of them!) They’d still have had a ‘pulley’ to dry the laundry – but doing the laundry itself would’ve been much more labour-intensive. The ironing? Yes, that’s easier today, too. I’ve already addressed the question of whether they had paid help – answer, the censuses reveal that they certainly didn’t have anyone living in, apart from when Rose’s children were wee.

So, much has changed – but in my situation, at least, the domestic labour is still entirely, 100% mine. The ironing basket will sit there scowling at me until I deal with it. Nothing will be tidied up or put away unless I do it. And (despite frequently being told to be grateful for the white goods in our kitchen, which ‘do everything’), the business of keeping things going, still seems to be defined as ‘women’s work’. (Don’t condemn me. It’s easier this way. IYKYK.)

However, the relative absence of hard graft today makes me all the more respectful of Mary-Ann and Rose, still writing poetry and music as well as doing all the housework! I suppose their daughters helped them. I bet they didn’t have to be politely asked or cajoled – it was probably accepted that this was what was expected of them.

When I go into town next week, Rose’s ghost may well be hanging around the old Glasgow Athenaeum, too. There’s no denying the School of Music opened doors for her. Come to think of it – the name has changed, the remit is far wider and the reach is now global – but the opening of doors is something else that RCS has continued to faciliate. ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’, as they say.

Getting to Know Mrs Smith, the ‘Lanarkshire Poetess’.

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Graveyard - Pixabay, Image by drippycat

Back I went to the library. I needed another look at Mrs M. A. Smith’s books, and most particularly, the Addendum containing the poem she wrote to her late husband, after she had checked the final proofs. It had just that poem, then another to a soldier who had met an untimely end. (As you might guess, I now have some newspaper-checking to do, since she wrote such a lot of memorial poetry.)

Smith recalled her husband’s blue eyes and military bearing. She was sad that he wouldn’t see the book, and said she’d miss his words of encouragement. She wrote about how she was handling her loss with her grieving children. I read that poem, over and over.

Seek and Ye shall Find

Smith’s writing is by no means all autobiographical, but some pieces are. I learnt more about her own childhood, and about her maternal sadnesses.  I was reminded of wee details that I’d noted before, but hadn’t needed to draw upon on in my own work so far.

I learnt that she loved the sound of the church organ. (She’d have been pleased that two daughters later played the organ as adults!)

Jerusalem (words by William Blake, music by Hubert Parry)

And at one point, I just smiled, because she mentioned the hymn, ‘Jerusalem’. Now, you would have to have attended church in Scotland to understand that this immediately marks her as English,  because Scots can’t abide singing about ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. As an English organist living in Scotland, I never get the opportunity to play that stirring tune, because the associations just aren’t favourable up here! I wonder if congregations were more, or less laid back about it back in the 1870s?

Graveyard image from Pixabay.