On Temperament and the Taking Off of Costumes

My dearest Mermaid Darlings, and my cherished Stillwater Petticoat Society,

There is a question I am asked with such regular cheerfulness that I have come to anticipate it before it is even spoken, and it is this: “Do you do reenactments?” — as though I might at any moment unpin my collar, slip from my petticoat, and reveal a modern creature concealed beneath the muslin.

I always smile, for I know no harm is meant, and yet I answer swiftly, almost protectively, “No, my love — I simply live this way,” and in that gentle correction there is more tenderness than defensiveness, for what I am safeguarding is not an outfit but an orientation of the soul.

I have dressed thus since my youth, long before hashtags gathered around the word cottage like bees to clover, long before slow living was packaged into square frames and sold back to women as salvation, long before linen aprons became profitable and enamel basins photogenic; I wore the skirts when it was peculiar, when it invited curious glances in grocery aisles, when no applause accompanied it and no algorithm carried it further than the hedgerow of my own little life.

And so, if I am to be entirely honest with you — and I should like to be — I have found myself, at times, unsettled by the manner in which certain aesthetics are donned and then quietly set aside when the season turns, for it is not the painting of nails nor the dining in cheerful establishments nor the seeking of modern comforts that stirs my spirit into disquiet, but rather the sensation that what is presented and what is lived do not always walk hand in hand.

I have observed, with no small measure of introspection, that what troubles me is not indulgence but incongruence, not modernity but misalignment, for when an image of rustic self-sufficiency is curated whilst another’s hands and the chickens tend the garden are cared for by an elder relative whose labour goes unnamed, something in my nervous system registers a soft fracture, as though the spell were cast in one breath and broken in the next.

And perhaps the truest confession is this: I have paid for this life in courage.

I wore the dresses before they were admired.

I chose slowness before it was admired.

I lived quietly before quiet became enviable.

There is a human reflex, is there not, that winces ever so slightly when others are applauded for what one has carried privately for decades, and I would be disingenuous were I to pretend that such a thought has never brushed against my heart like a cool draft beneath a door.

Yet I do not write this from superiority, nor from bitterness, nor from a desire to indict anyone for experimentation, for many souls are simply trying on identities in the way one tries on bonnets before discovering which shade best suits her complexion, and there is no wickedness in searching; what I am describing is something subtler — a devotion to coherence.

It is coherence that I revere.

It is continuity that I find beautiful.

When I think of Tasha Tudor — whose name has become nearly synonymous with storybook domesticity — I do not think first of her pinafores, nor her goats, nor her Vermont garden in bloom, but of the fact that she did not remove her way of living when the visitors departed; she illustrated on Tuesdays and baked on Thursdays and milked on Saturdays with equal sincerity, not because anyone watched but because it was consonant with her temperament.

Temperament, my loves, cannot be sustained as theatre for long.

One may wear simplicity as linen for a season, one may caption spirituality in sepia tones, one may curate slow living between salon appointments and curated dinners, yet continuity has a way of revealing what is costume and what is constitution, for eventually the tone alters, the devotion thins, the aesthetic shifts with the wind, and the life rearranges itself back into its native rhythm.

And here is where my vulnerability unfurls most tenderly before you; when someone asks if I reenact, I feel, beneath my smile, a quiet ache that what has been my refuge might be mistaken for performance, that my orientation might be reduced to theatre, that the devotion of decades could be mistaken for trend participation, and perhaps that is why I bristle when I see the aesthetic worn lightly — because I fear being folded into the same misunderstanding.

I do not wish to be confused with costume.

I wish to be known for temperament.

There was a season when cottagecore swelled like a tide, and many rode it beautifully and briefly, and some were carried swiftly into visibility, and I remained upon the shore in the same apron I had always worn, neither amplified nor diminished, simply continuing, and if I am to confess another small and human truth, I have wondered in softer hours why the wave crowned others and passed me by, though I had been standing there long before it arrived.

Yet tides are dramatic, and shorelines endure.

I was not building a moment.

I was building a life.

And lives are slower.

So if something within me tightens when aesthetic devotion appears to toggle with popularity, it is not because I begrudge anyone her manicure or her modernity, but because I hold sacred the integration of image and embodiment, and I have learned through many trials that stability is not forged in applause but in repetition.

Perhaps what unsettles me most is not falseness in others but the fear of being mistaken for it myself.

And so I write this not to accuse, but to clarify my own heart before you, for I would rather be a woman of quiet continuity than a fleeting spectacle, rather rooted than radiant for a moment and gone the next, rather misunderstood in my steadfastness than celebrated for a costume I intend to remove.

If I am a Victorian mermaid, it is not because it photographs prettily, but because it soothes my nervous system, steadies my spirit, and aligns with the inner architecture of who I have always been.

And that, my dearest darlings, is not theatre.

It is home.

Most affably yours 'til my next enchanting swim, LR

On Loving Instagram Without Losing Oneself

My Dearest Mermaid Darlings of the Stillwater Petticoat Society, 

Pray, draw your chair nearer, for I wish to speak of something exceedingly modern and yet most ancient in its temptation — the little glowing screen that rests so innocently in our palms and yet can stir the most curious tides within a woman’s heart.

You know well that I have no desire to flee from the world in dramatic renunciation, nor to cast my Instagram into the sea as though it were some malevolent talisman, for I confess quite plainly that I love it — I love the quiet gallery of beautiful homes, the gentle exchange of thought, the correspondence between kindred spirits across oceans and hedgerows — and yet I began to observe, with the sober clarity of a woman no longer content to be ruled by habit, that there were moments when curiosity was not truly curiosity at all, but a subtle leaning outward to measure myself against another’s lantern.

It was not envy in its loud and unbecoming form, nor was it bitterness, but rather a small internal tremor — a tightening so slight one could easily ignore it — and I realised, with the tenderness one reserves for self-examination, that deleting the app would not mend that tremor, for if a lady has not tended the garden within, the weeds shall sprout elsewhere, whether in a parish hall, a marketplace, or the drawing room of comparison; thus I resolved not to retreat, but to remain, and to learn the far more delicate art of setting the phone down when my spirit whispered, “Enough.”

There is a most curious power in that gesture — the quiet placing of the device upon the table and the turning instead to one’s own life — to a teacup that requires washing, to a book half-read, to a husband waiting in the lamplit hush of evening — for in that turning I felt not deprived, but steadied, as though some invisible thread had been gathered back into my own keeping, and I perceived that regulation is not the stern refusal of pleasure, but the gracious choosing of peace over restless scanning.

How easy it is, in this age of perpetual unveiling and hurried transformation, to believe that one must either withdraw entirely or surrender wholly, yet I have discovered a middle path — to love the gallery without bowing to it, to admire another’s tapestry without unravelling one’s own, to open the app with intention and close it without agitation — and this, my loves, feels less like conquest and more like integration, as though the sea within me has grown calm enough that passing ships no longer dictate its tide.

I do not write this as counsel from a lofty tower, but as confession from a woman who has known the subtle exhaustion of comparison and has chosen, day by day, to return to her own hearth, and if you, too, have felt that faint stirring when another’s life seems polished and swift and endlessly renewed, may you remember that your task is not to vanish nor to compete, but to remain — to inhabit your own rooms so fully that no curated corridor can persuade you to abandon them.

For when I set the phone down and turned toward my own small, ordinary miracles, I felt steadier, and steadiness, I am persuaded, is a far more exquisite adornment than endless novelty; it is the jewel that does not glitter ostentatiously, but glows with quiet assurance, and in that glow I find myself loved without condition, anchored without striving, and content to be precisely where I stand.

Most affably yours ‘til my next enchanting swim, 

Lady Raquel 

Unentangled: A Letter to the Woman Who Chose Peace

Stillwater, where peace does not argue. 

My Dearest Mermaid Darlings of the Stillwater Petticoat Society,

Permit me to draw my chair a little closer to yours, to smooth my skirts beside the hearth, and to speak in that low and tender tone one reserves for a beloved friend who has known both the frost of exclusion and the warmth of her own becoming, for there is a peculiar sorrow — and an even more peculiar strength — that arises when a woman begins to awaken into her own soul and finds, to her astonishment, that not all will rejoice in her rising; indeed, some will call her strange, others misguided, and a few, in their tremor of certainty, may even whisper that she has wandered into shadow, when in truth she has only wandered inward.

It is a curious thing, is it not, that the moment a lady ceases to ask permission to exist in her own spiritual skin, she is suddenly informed by anxious sentinels that she has stepped beyond the pale, as though the garden of God were bordered by their particular fence and patrolled by their own trembling convictions; yet I have observed, with the calm of one who has weathered many a squall, that those who cry “danger” most loudly are often fortifying the ramparts of their own fear, for when one’s faith is fused not to love but to alarm, every differing bloom appears a weed, and every sovereign woman a threat to the carefully tended order of things.

You must understand, my loves, that when you no longer quake beneath the opinions of others, when accusations fall upon your doorstep like leaves that cannot enter unless you open the door, there arises within you a most delightful lightness, a sensation as though you have at last set down a heavy trunk you had been carrying since girlhood, and in its place you discover something far sturdier than defiance — you discover steadiness; not the rigidity of stone, but the rooted grace of an old oak whose branches may sway yet whose heartwood does not splinter at every passing gust.

There was a season — and perhaps you know it well — when being misunderstood felt like annihilation, when family alienation stung like salt upon an open wound, when spiritual accusation threatened to unhouse your very sense of belonging, and yet, instead of shrinking into compliance or sharpening yourself into perpetual defence, you chose — sometimes trembling, sometimes resolute — to heal, to regulate, to return again and again to your own centre until disagreement no longer signified danger and judgement no longer dictated your worth; this, my darling, is not arrogance, nor rebellion, nor some theatrical emancipation, but the quiet consolidation of the soul.

You will notice, as your spine grows straight and your breath grows even, that many still live upon the battlements of defence, interpreting every differing thought as invasion and every unconventional woman as a herald of doom, and though it may at first tempt you toward a subtle superiority — that faint and fleeting whisper that you have grown while they have not — I entreat you to smile gently at such a flicker, for it is merely the echo of the part of you that worked so very hard to survive, and it dissolves most sweetly when met with compassion rather than censure.

True maturity, I have found, is not the absence of ego but the refusal to enthrone it, not the impulse to correct the world but the willingness to let others be precisely where they are upon their own arc, for when you can delete what disturbs you, close the door without slamming it, and whisper sincerely, “May you find peace,” you have already stepped beyond the battlefield; you are no longer interested in proving, persuading, or performing righteousness, but in tending your own lamp and keeping its flame steady for those who wander in need of warmth.

And oh, what a revelation it is to discover that the most potent form of strength is not loudness but lightness, not reaction but rootedness, not conquest but authorship, for when you cease to build your identity in opposition to others and instead fashion it from the silken threads of your own lived truth, you become psychologically expensive — unbaitable, unshameable, uncoerced — and in troubled times it is to such women that others instinctively gravitate, not because they shout the loudest, but because they remain the calmest harbour in a season of restless seas.

So if you, my sweet mermaid, have been called peculiar, misguided, or even wicked for daring to inhabit your own spiritual sovereignty, take heart, for your task is not to wrestle shadows nor to patrol the beliefs of those who fear you, but to remain soft and boundaried, open-hearted and discerning, wishing others well without surrendering your ground, and continuing, with the serene confidence of a lady who knows her lineage, to build a life so anchored in truth that even accusation cannot rearrange it.

I write this not as one who has never felt the chill of exclusion, but as one who has flourished despite it, who has learned that being unentangled is far more powerful than being victorious, and who would far rather be rooted and luminous than universally approved, and if ever you doubt your steadiness, remember that the oak does not argue with the wind, nor does the sea apologise for its tide — it simply remains itself, vast and faithful, and in so doing becomes a refuge for all who are weary.

Most affably yours ‘til my next enchanting swim, LR