"A Charm in those Fingers": Patterns, Taste, and the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine

Abstract

are a thousand things that everybody sees, and nobody thinks of, marvels author of Railway Magic, an 1855 article in Englishwoman s Domestic Magazine.1 The writer is particularly interested in drawing attention to sensory experience of train travel. It is not just that new parts of country open up to railway, or that speed allows one to cover new territory; actual sights of everyday are given new meaning when seen from window of a train. The modernity of train travel enables traveler to see English countryside with new eyes: eyes of a housewife. Looking out train window, anonymous author asks, And did you remark not a spike wrenched from its good hold, not a tie un-tied, not a timber splintered? There must be a charm in those fingers indeed. The construction of railway is work of an especially tidy and conscientious laborer, depicted here as domestic woman.2 As train rushes viewer from far to near perspective, features of landscape are crafted from quotidian housewifely objects: Strips of narrow yellow ribbon widen into broad acres of golden grain; scattered skeins of silk floss are webbed into running rivers. Rural idyll and modern power merge into one image, united through a visual perspective that draws its references from needlework rather than farming or factory work. Fingers, ribbon, and silk floss feature prominently in parts of periodical devoted to sewing and fancy-work patterns. Railway Magic concludes that railway marks out and almost creates surrounding fields, lakes, and towns. The railway's relationship to landscape becomes much like a pattern for an embroidered scene: the railway itself, in magic of distance seems double scoring of beautiful fields and lakes and towns along