Reality Vs. Ideal

Several bloggers of costuming and historical clothing (American Duchess, Wearing History, Dreamstress) have written about the issue of privacy and the reality behind their 'seemingly perfect' lives as doyennes of the historical sewing world, and issued a challenge to others to consider this, both as a topic of contemplation and doing so oneself, at least briefly.

This arose because of commentary from readers, asking if they ever made mistakes, despairing because the readers didn't have time or money to make such gorgeousness, or that they felt run over by their real lives.

There is an opinion in our media-driven world that anyone who publishes a blog is thereby a public person and forfeits the right to privacy; we take an older view, that public and private lives shall not mix, that decency, courtesy, graciousness, civility, and tact shall reign in one's public life, and that differences of opinion, whether social, religious or political, should be civilly discussed in private, and affect neither business nor political life.

It should be a given that 'life happens' to us all in equal measure. However, with the rare apology for absence due to illness, death in the family and so on, we believe that our public life should focus on its purpose, in this case the English Arts and Crafts and its methods, designs, ethics, and continuance. If our aim is to inspire, and to enable others to have oases of graciousness and beauty in their lives, it serves no useful purpose to lament the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It might serve us to reflect on a Pre-Raphaelite painting of some similar subject (Waterhouse's Miranda springs to mind), but that is misfortune made an opportunity for Beauty, which is perhaps a good spiritual practise.

Further, we have ideals - of beauty, of form, of philosophy - to uplift us from the mean concerns of the everyday, and to help us give meaning to such happenstances as Life chooses to visit upon us. We think of the private lives of Msrs. Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Ruskin. Every PRB fan knows these details, as indeed did the whole group at the time. But the details were not splashed all over the media. Nowhere do we find Mrs. Ruskin/Lady Millais writing to the agony aunt of the Times, or Topsy publishing his domestic intricacies alongside News From Nowhere.  Not because these details are shameful or embarrassing, but because in the end, they do not matter.

They do not matter.

What matters is what we create, the legacy we leave.

Ars longia, Vita brevis, as Topsy liked to say.