Secrets Told.
Inscribed
Kingsbury, Alice. Secrets Told. With twenty-two piquant illustrations from life. San Francisco: Alta California Printing House, 1879.
8vo.; stain on top edge; brown cloth; stamped in gilt and black; spine sunned; edgeworn; bubbled. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition; with frontispiece portrait of Kingsbury, and a Preface, signed with her male sobriquet “Hop O-My-Thumb,” with whom she “co-authors” the book. This is a humorous and effective device; and, for a contemporary audience, may have offered a certain amount of credence to the advice – the “secrets” – proffered to both a male and female audience. A presentation copy, inscribed: Mrs. J. D. James/2131 Harvard St./City/May 10, 1879/from/Alice Kingsbury. With some faint penciled annotations throughout, presumably in Mrs. James’s hand.
The book prints anecdotes about the differences between the sexes and includes tips on how husbands should treat wives, and vice versa. By alternating between herself and her alter ego – and by infusing her writing with a sense of playfulness – she is able to reach male and female readers equally and effectively.
Kingsbury wrote this book, she says in the Preface,
to help the dear sex with which I so sympathize, in their troubles, disappointments, and the thousand and one petty annoyances of married life. I do it to help them correct any faults of their own that have in any possible way contributed to their unhappiness. I do it that they may quietly drop the book in their husbands’ way, so that they can see the trouble, the little faults of Jones or Smith to their wives and families, and so be tempted to mentally examine themselves. (p. 1)
In a post-script to the Preface the publisher announces, “It was the intention of the writer to receive lady subscribers only, but finding, although it was very sure it was rather too slow for his purpose – the reason for the aforesaid slowness, see book – he therefore announces that the subscription list is open to the masculine gender also.”
In thirty-four sections, with titles including, “About Husbands’ Presents,” “Darning Stockings,” “Too Early Marriage,” “A Plea for Laziness,” “The Girls of Today,” and “Speak Your Mind.” Four sections are marked as having been published previously: “On the War Path” (published in The Argonaut); “A Woman’s Exposé of the Male Housekeeper” (The Chronicle); “The Wrong Wrought by a Corner Grocery” (anonymous; appeared in The Chronicle); and “The Man Who Stays at Home Too Much” (The Chronicle). In the section titled “Why Do Men Marry?” the following paragraph is noted in pencil as being “very true indeed”:
Yes, but Uncle John, why do men want to marry, try so hard to win us, yes, and, I must say it, tell so many lies, too, about how devoted they’ll be? They could live on a desert island forever if we alone were there, and that we are the only woman in the world for them? Oh! they all say the same, for my friends told me so. Why don’t they speak the truth right out, and say they want to marry us to look after their buttons, see their shirts are not stolen by the China washerman, that their dinner is ready whenever they want it, and to have somebody when it’s cold to warm their beds! (p. 73)
Kingsbury is clever to address both male and female readers; most of her advice is embedded within a humorous story, and is therefore non-threatening. In the section titled “Scolding,” Hop O-My-Thumb says to his male readers, in reference to women, “If we refuse them the ballot, for goodness sake, let us grant them the privilege of expressing their minds freely” (p. 6). Later on, in the section, “About Husbands’ Present,” in a jab at their gift-giving habits, Kingsbury advises,
Accept any and every present your husband gives, always with smiles, always with thanks; praise the gift, if you can one-twentieth part conscientiously, or admire the great taste displayed in selecting it; go into raptures over it, if it is a
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