I started a new project this morning and I needed some of those instruction sheets from the inside of old dress patterns so I went to my 'suitcase' full of music, maps and patterns etc and I found this little magazine inside that I'd forgotten all about. It's dated from 1957 and has kept me amused when I should have been getting on with something else. I just wanted to share one of the letters on Sarah Hope's Help Page headed 'Does Age Matter?'
"Often I have seen letters on your page in which you have said that you don't consider age differences matter when two people really love each other. So I am hoping you will side with me against my parents who are terribly against my marrying a man who is thirty-seven years older than I am, being fifty-seven to my twenty. I know I love him and that he loves me so what does it matter that he has lived a good deal longer than I have. I can't marry him until I am twenty-one but I intend to do so the moment I am. Do support me. I feel sure I am right".
Sarah replies : " Sorry to disappoint you but I am afraid I agree with your mother - the age difference in this case is far too big and it is extremely unlikely that you would be happy married to a man so very, very much your senior. Nor do I think that the man himself would be happy; he is getting to an age when he wants a quiet home life with few visitors or distractions and he'd probably find a young wife and her friends boring. I hope that by the time you are twenty one and free to marry you'll see how unlikely it is that such a marriage as you are contemplating would succeed".
Speaking as someone who is getting to that age this year when I want a quiet home life with few visitors or distractions I wonder if these two ever did marry. I love the way she says ' what does it matter that he has lived a good deal longer than I have!' Ah , the wisdom of youth. I wonder if she read the rest of the magazine and bought the lipstick? I wouldn't mind having some. If you click on the image and read the ad in it's entirety you'll see that 'he'll love you wearing it.... it makes you lovelier with its natural transparent beauty'. It was only 2/6 but for an extra five shillings (five shillings!) you could get it in a better case. Let's hope she bought the lipstick and found true happiness.
6 comments:
2/6 for a lipstick in 1957 would have been quite expensive wouldn't it? Some of these old magazines are a hoot aren't they and if at 57 one should be looking for a quiet life with few visitors or distractions then perhaps that is where I have gone wrong since I seem to have had more distractions and visitors since retiring than before! Did you find the instruction sheets in the end and what are you going to do with them? Am intrigued.
Jane x
As one OLDER than the intended - I could do with a partner 20 years my junior to weed and mulch the raspberries as I have been doing for the last couple of hours, but it would have to be real love wouldn't it to devote a lovely Saturday afternoon to chores? Dear Mr T, who cannot bend is washing flowerpots and planting melon seeds and more mange tout etc. this year it is going to me my job to plant the veg.(Oops sorry this is not meant to be about me.) I'm afraid I agree with Mum too, but I certainly remember being in love at 20!! Many times over!
I hope you'll share your project.Intriguing...
Oh dear...and we will never know what happened!
That got me in. Its a revelation to find something written in another era!
I do like you previous post about the book you made Lesley!
It looks wonderful.
Sophie
I loved the words re the lipstick that said it wouldn't come off anything or anyone!
I wonder what Sarah's advice would have been if the ages were the other way around ...!
Dirk Bogarde - now he had an intriguing life - excellent autobiographies, have you read them(?)- but I digress!
Loved the books in your previous post - your creativity knows no bounds Lesley!
Jeanne
x
Haha - I've fallen into that trap too, just yesterday, of reading all the letters and ads in an old Woman's Weekly!
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