Keep Going and Like It, by Marjorie Hillis Roulston

Reading Jane's review of Marjorie Hillis's Live Alone and Like It reminded me that there were other books by Hillis to read - and now a book about her, The Extra Woman by Joanna Scutts. I was happy to find two of her books available through inter-library loan. The first to arrive was this one, subtitled "A Guide to the Sixties and Onward and Upward With Some Irreverent Rhymes."

Chapter One, "The Young Sixties and Seventies," begins,

This little book is written in the belief that you can have as interesting, useful, and even gay life in the sixties and seventies and often the eighties as at any other time in your life. You can also be miserable. The latter is equally true at twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty.

Chapters on the active life, travel, clothes and make-up, illness, housing, dating, and food follow, much as in her earlier books. There is also a chapter on grandchildren, which is more about how to be a good grandmother. A central theme of this book, as in her earlier ones, is that life take planning and purpose, and some effort, if you want to get the most out of it.

Despite the similarities to Hillis's earlier books, I didn't enjoy this one nearly as much. It was written thirty years later, in 1967, yet paradoxically it feels more dated to me. And while Hillis was careful to include advice for those on limited budgets, the book seems aimed more at the well-off. She takes it for granted that her readers will have a maid at least. (If moving, they might want to find a home with easy access to a movie theater, to please the help.)  I felt her photo on the back cover suggested the type of woman she was writing for here, fur cuffs and all.

I also missed the (probably fictional) "Case studies" that Hillis used to underline her points in the early books. I don't think that her "irreverent rhymes" added much to this book. She wrote another book, Work Ends at Nightfall, entirely in verse. I haven't looked for a copy of it yet. On the other hand, she includes more examples and anecdotes from her own life, and those I did enjoy. And it was a pleasant surprise to come across two references to Houston. She commended the excellent opera company here (still going strong), and she included it on a list of cities worth visiting for their "art, culture, shopping, and night life..." (recommending travel in the U.S. and Canada, and not just for those who can't afford to travel abroad).

In the end, this was a couple of hours' pleasant reading, but not a patch on Live Alone and Like It. The other book I have requested is You Can Start All Over, is a guide for widows and divorcées - the latter still slightly scandalous, I would think, when it was published in 1951.

Bubbly on Your Budget, by Marjorie Hillis

Earlier this year I read Marjorie Hillis's first book, Live Alone and Like It from 1936, and loved it. When Claire wrote about this second book, I rushed to order a copy. It was originally published in 1937 as Orchids on Your Budget. In the last few years it has been reprinted a couple of times. The edition I read is from Chronicle Books in 2011. I suppose somewhere along the line, someone decided that bubbly in the title would appeal more to 21st-century readers than orchids. The subtitle was also changed, from "Live Smartly on What You Have" to "Live Luxuriously With What You Have."

That was an unfortunate change, because this book is not really about living luxuriously. It's about living within your means, and managing to have your bubbly on those terms. As with the first book, some of what Marjorie Hillis wrote now seems dated, but much of her advice is just as applicable today as in 1937. She was writing in the later years of the Great Depression, which by her account had begun to lift. Sometimes this book felt like it could have been written yesterday, given the economic roller-coaster that we have been riding lately (and not just in the United States).

The two books are very similar in approach, and in the tone of the writing. They tackle serious topics, offering practical advice mixed with snarky commentary. As with Live Alone and Like It, one of the main points here is that proper living takes attention and planning.

    As a matter of fact, most of the people who think they're poor are right. For the feeling of poverty isn't a matter of how little money you have - it's a matter of being behind on your bills at the end of the month or not making your income stretch over the things that you want. . . What most people don't concede is that, with a little planning and a dash of ingenuity, they might have what they want. They hate to plan (planning about possibilities and daydreaming about improbabilities are not the same things), they detest the Problem anyway, and they don't want to make the effort needed to Do Anything About It. They want bubbly on their budgets - but that's about as far as they get.
    This isn't very intelligent, because almost anyone with spirit can wangle a bottle of bubbly or two, and have a lot of fun besides. We are all for fun and bubbly. . . 

As Hillis wrote in a later chapter, though, "The point, nowadays, is not merely to know the cost of a thing and whether you have money to pay for it, but to know whether it's worth its price to you." That is a question that I need to ask myself more often.

The chapters that follow deal with practical matters: housing, food, budgeting, savings, and clothes. That last one is a very detailed guide to choosing clothes wisely and dressing well, in 1937, which makes it feel the most dated. I kept trying to think of films from the mid-1930s, to picture the clothes. I was sometimes a bit lost among all the requirements and the rules on color (don't buy a blue dress, brown coat, and black hat to wear together, but you can wear a canary-yellow gilet with a navy-blue suit). At least the "Little Black Dress" sounded familiar, however much its length and lines may have changed in the last 80 years.

I found two chapters particularly entertaining. "Things You Can't Afford" covers the wrong kind of economies, and ends with a quiz, "Are you thrifty or stingy?" (Apparently I am occasionally stingy.) The other is "Can You Afford a Husband?"

Well, can you? A lot of women do, and support them nicely on a small salary at that. And why not, if they want to? It may be an extravagance, but even periods of strict economy should include some extravagances if possible.

Hillis admitted that a husband might be nice to have around, but she did not consider one indispensable. (Which makes me wonder a little about her own marriage.) And with all due respect to Love, a woman still had to consider the practicalities - particularly since, in the author's experience, "the most delightful people are seldom big money-makers." A woman who chooses a "non-money maker" must be prepared to support him as well as herself. In any case, for Hillis marriage didn't automatically mean the wife stayed home. Even if the husband was working, they might need two salaries - particularly if they wanted bubbly in their budget.

I am not that fond of bubbly myself, nor of orchids. I think that books are my bubbly, and this was certainly a fizzy read!

Live Alone and Like It, a "Classic Guide for the Single Woman" of 1936

Live Alone and Like It, Marjorie Hillis

This "Classic Guide for the Single Woman," first published in 1936, is one of the brightest and funniest books that I've read in a long time.  According to the author's note, Marjorie Hillis worked for Vogue, eventually becoming an assistant editor.  She was part of the rise of a class of professional women in early 20th-century America, many of whom lived away from family and on their own - both major social changes.  Her book is aimed at her fellow workers, as well as those women who through chance or circumstance ended up living alone.  It includes a lot of practical information, some a bit dated, but other sections that wouldn't be out of place in this month's Oprah magazine.  It's the tone though that makes this such a delight.  Here is the opening of the first chapter, "Solitary Refinement":

    This book is no brief in favor of living alone. Five out of ten people who do so can't help themselves, and at least three of the others are irritatingly selfish. But the chances are that at some time in your life, possibly only now and then between husbands, you will find yourself settling down to a solitary existence.
    You may do it from choice. Lots of people do - more and more every year.  Most of them think that they are making a fine modern gesture and, along about the second month, frequently wish they hadn't.
     Or you may - though of course you don't - belong to the great army of Lonely Hearts with nobody to love them. This is a group to which no one with any gumption need belong for more than a couple of weeks, but in which a great many people settle permanently and gloomily.

I loved the bracing mix of snark and hard common sense in those paragraphs, which set the tone for the rest of the book.  In the next, Ms. Hillis laid out the philosophy and purpose of her book:

The point is that there is a technique about living alone successfully, as there is about doing anything really well.  Whether you view your one-woman ménage as Doom or Adventure (and whether you are twenty-six or sixty-six), you need a plan, if you are going to make the best of it.

She was a strong advocate for independence and self-determination, writing "You have got to decide what kind of life you want and then make it for yourself."  It should be a life that brings enjoyment and fulfillment.  Her book covers what she saw as key elements in a plan for successful living.  The most important is to build relationships, friendships as much as romance.  (Refreshingly, if this book isn't a brief for living alone, it also does not assume that all women will or should marry, nor is it a husband-hunting guide.)  She included advice on dressing well, furnishing and decorating a home (of any size, including a studio apartment), cooking and eating for one, and entertaining.  There is also very practical advice about living on a budget, and the need for savings, particularly in planning for retirement.  All of this makes for an interesting social history of life in the 1930s.

Each chapter ends with case studies, illustrating the topics covered in the chapter.  They contrast women who have made happy lives for themselves with others who can't be bothered, or those who feel too sorry for themselves to even try.  One of my favorites was Mrs. C of Chicago, recently widowed,

who weighed the advantages of being a widow in one place or the other and decided that her choice was between frills in her home town and necessities in Chicago. Knowing herself better than most of us do, she took the frills and returned, sleek and slim in widow's weeds, to her native town. . . She has become a Character and will some day become a Legend.  And since Mrs C loves popularity and adores fame, and would have had little of either in Chicago, we salute her as a lady who knew what she wanted and got it.

Ms. Hillis was a great advocate of comfort and even luxury, within one's budget.  She laid it down as dogma that single women should have their breakfasts in bed, even (or especially) if they were going on to some less-than-exciting job.  "[B]e an elegant lady of leisure just the same, from, say, seven-forty-five to eight-fifteen. Even though nobody knows, you'll be more of a person the rest of the day."  Of course, to truly enjoy that luxury, one's bedroom should be as comfortable and well-furnished as possible.

It is probably true that most people have more fun in bed than anywhere else, and we are not being vulgar . . . We are all for as much glamour as possible in the bedroom. The single bedroom, as well as the double one.  If even the most respectable spinsters would regard their bedrooms as places where anything might happen, the resulting effects would be extremely beneficial.

The temptation is to go on quoting from this racy, pithy little book.  I'll stop here, and just leave you with the titles of a few of the chapters, which might tempt you in turn: "When a Lady Needs a Friend," "Setting for a Solo Act," and "A Lady and Her Liquor."