Constant reposts from weheartit.
Please stop. Just reblog.
Also, none of them are Victorian.
Just sayin’.
Late Victorian era gravestones in the snow, Aldridge Cemetery, Aldridge, Walsall, England
V
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
The Sphinx and the Pyramids, Giza, Egypt
By Francis Bedford
Albumen print, 4 March 1862
Parlour games were a very popular form of entertainment during the Victorian period especially at Christmas when families and friends were gathered together. Some of these Christmas games included ‘Snap-Dragon’, ‘The Laughing Game’ and ‘The Sculptor’. Snap-Dragon was especially popular with children and involved filling a shallow tray with brandy and raisins then setting it on fire. With the lights in the room turned low the players had to pick the raisins out of the flames and eat them without burning their fingers. The rules of the Laughing Game were that players would sit in a circle and take it in turns to say ‘Ha’, ‘Ho’ or ‘Hee’ whilst maintaining a straight face. The first person to actually laugh was the loser. The Sculptor involved choosing one person to be the sculptor who would then position the other players in uncomfortable poses. The sculptor would then try to get the other players to move without touching them. The first person to move would lose the game and in turn become the sculptor.
Conter fleurette.
George du Maurier, from Pegasus re-saddled, by Henry Cholmondeley-Pennell, Philadelphia, 1878.
(Source: archive.org)
