How Elizabeth Parker Changed My Life (Part II)
(content warning: this post includes mentions of mental health, abuse, suicide)
Meet Elizabeth Parker- in her own words:
"As i cannot write I put this down simply and freely as I might speak to a person to whose intimacy and tenderness I can fully intrust myself and who I know will bear with all my weaknesses.... I was born at Ashburnham in the county of Sussex in the year 1813 of poor but pious parents my fathers occupation was a labourer for the Rt Hon the Earl of A my mother kept the Rt Hon the Countefs of A Charity School and by their ample conduct and great industry were enabeled to render a comfortable living for their family which were eleven in number William Samuel Mary Edmond Jesse Elizabeth Hannah Jane George Louisa Lois endeavouring to bring us up in the fear and admonition of the lord as far as lay in their power always giving us good advice and wishing us to do unto others as we would they should do unto us thus our parents pointed out the way in which we were to incounter with this world wishing us at all times to put our trust in god to Walk in the paths of virtue to bear up under all the trials of this life even till time with us should end. But at the early age of thirteen I left my parents to go and live with Mr and Mrs P to nurse the children which had I taken my Fathers and Mothers advice I might have remained in peace until this day but like many others not knowing when I was well of in fourteen months I left them for which my friends greatly blamed me then I went to Fairlight housemaid to Lieut G but there cruel usage soon made me curse my Disobedience to my parents wishing I had taken there advice and never left the Worthy Family of P but then alas to late they treated me with cruelty too horrible to mention for trying to avoid the wicked design of my master I was thrown down stairs but I very soon left them and came to my friends but being young and foolish I never told my friends what had happened to me they thinking I had a good place and good usage because I never told them to the contrary they blamed my temper. Then I went to live with Col P Catsfield kitchenmaid where I was well of but there my memory failed me and my reason was taken from me but the worthy Lady my Mistress took great care of me and placed me in the care of my parents and sent for Dr W who soon brought me to know that I was wrong for Coming to me one day and finding me persisting against my Mother for I had forsaken her advice to follow the works of darkness For I acknowledge being guilty of that great sin of selfdestruction which I certainly should have done had it not been for the words of that worthy Gentleman Dr W. he came to me in the year 1829 he said unto me Elizabeth I understand you are guilty of saying you shall destroy yourself but never do that for Remember Elizabeth if you do when you come before that great God who is so good to you he will say unto you Thou hast taken that life that I gave to you Depart from me ye cursed but let me never hear those words pronounced by the O Lord for surely I never felt such impressions of awe striking cold upon my breast as I felt when Dr W said so to me. But oh with what horror would those words pierce my heart to hear them pronounced by an offended God But my views of things have been for some time very different from what they were when I first came home I have seen and felt the vanity of childhood and youth And above all I have felt the stings of a guilty Conscience for the great Disobedience to my parents in not taking their advice wherewith the Lord has seen fit to visit me with this affliction but my affliction is a light affliction to what I have deserved but the Lord has been very merciful to me for he has not cut me of in my sins but he has given me this space for repentance. For blessed be God my frequent schemes for destroying myself were all most all defeated. But oh the dreadful powerful force of temptation for being much better I went to stay with Mrs Welham she being gone out one day and left me alone soon after she was gone I thought within myself surely I am one of the most miserable objects that ever the Lord let live surely no one ever had such thoughts as me against the Lord and I arose from my seat to go into the bedroom and as I was going I thought within myself ah me I will retire into the most remotest part of the wood and there execute my design and that design was that wilful design of self destruction But the Lord was pleased to stop me in this mad career for seeing the Bible lay upon the shelf I took it down and opened it and the first place that I found was the fourth chapter of S. Luke where it tells us how our blessed Lord was tempted of Satan I read it and it seemed to give me some relief for now and not till now have I been convinced of my lost and sinful state not till now have I seen what a miserable condition I have brought myself into by my sins for now do I see myself lost and undone for ever undone the Lord does take pity of me and help me out of this miserable condition. But the only object I have now in view is that of approaching death I feel assured that sooner or later I must die and oh but after death I must come to Judgement what can I do to be saved what can I do to be saved from the wrath of that God which my sins have deserved which way can I turn oh whither must I flee to find the Lord wretch wretch that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death that I have been seeking what will become of me ah me what will become of me when I come to die and kneel before the Lord my maker oh with what confidence can I approach the mercy seat of God oh with what confidence can I approach it. And with what words must I chuse to address the Lord my maker pardon mine inquity pardon mine inquity O Lord for It is Great Oh how great is thy mercy oh thou most merciful Lord for thou knowest even the secret desires of me thine unworthy servant. O Lord I pray the Look down with an Eye of pity upon me and I pray the turn my wicked Heart Day and night have I Cried unto the Lord to turn my wicked Heart the Lord has heard my prayer the Lord has given heed to my Complaint. For as long as life extends extends Hopes blest dominion never ends For while the lamp holds on to burn the greatest sinner may return Life is the season God has given to fly from hell to rise to Heaven the Day of grace flees fast away their is none its rapid course can stay. The Living know that they must die But ah the dead forgotten lie Their memory and their name is gone They are alike unknowing and unknown. Their hatred and their love is lost. Their envy's buried in the dust By the will of God are all things done beneath the circuit of the sun Therefore O Lord take pity on me I pray Whenever my thoughts do from the stray And lead me Lord to thy blest fold. That I thy glory may behold Grant Lord that I soon may behold the not as my Judge to condemn and punish me but as my Father to pity and restore me For I know with the O Lord no thing is impossible thou can if thou wilt restore my bodily health And set me free from sin and misery For since my earthly physican has said he can do no more for me in the will I put my trust O blessed Jesus grant that I may never more offend the or provoke the to cast me of in thy displeasure Forgive my sin my folly cure Grant me the help I need And then although I am mean and poor I shall be rich indeed Lord Jesus have mercy upon me take me O kind shepherd take me a poor wandering sinner to thy fold Thou art Lord of all things itself death is put under thy feet O Lord save me lest I fall from thee never to rise again O God keep me from all evil thoughts The little hope I feel that I shall obtain mercy gives a happiness to which none of the pleasures of sin can ever be compared. I never knew anything like happiness till now O that I may but be saved on the day of judge- ment God be merciful to me a sinner But oh how can I expect mercy who went on in sin until Dr W remind me of my wickedness For with shame I own I returned to thee O God because I had nowhere else to go How can such repentance as mine be sincere What will become of my soul"
How do you feel after reading that? I invite you to pause here and really consider what feelings these words evoke in you.....
Did your heart clench like mine did? Did you feel sad, angry, curious, or confused?
Did you hear someone zealous, grieving, lost, hopeful? How do you imagine young Elizabeth? Her hair long and dark, or light? Her stomach hungry or full? Her skin pale or flushed? Did she stitch these words sitting in a straight-backed chair next to a sunny window or huddled alone in her bed by candlelight? Did she hide this under her mattress, or was it wrapped in a special ribbon and unrolled each day to stitch a little more?
Have you ever felt like Elizabeth? Have you ever asked yourself and God these questions? Have you ever poured out your deepest pains and fears in a place where others might see? Were you ever brave enough to voice them aloud or commit them to paper or fabric?
1,641 words entirely stitched in tiny, precise cross stitches. Red silk thread on everyday linen. A researcher estimated this may have taken Elizabeth up to 2,450 hours to stitch this piece. I’ve been working to validate this estimate (which was based on the assumption that each individual letter would take about 22 minutes). I did some online research, and reached out to any cross stitchers I could find, and it seems that a reasonable average rate of # stitches per hour (for an experienced stitcher) would be 100-200. I’m not a cross stitcher myself, so I can’t test really test this accurately. I did, however do some deeper examination of the sampler and here are some details I found interesting:
- Height of textile height: 85.8cm (Maximum)
- Width of textile width: 74.4cm (Maximum)
- 1,643 total words
- 6,410 letters
- Average of 12 individual cross stitches per letter
This adds up as a total of almost 77,000 individual “x” cross stitches!!!
By my calculations for an experienced stitcher (which Elizabeth certainly was), I would estimate it took Elizabeth around 800 hours to complete this piece. And, while that’s a significantly lower estimate than the researcher gave, putting it into an everyday context is pretty staggering: if she worked on this for 2 hours a day, every day, it would have taken over a year to complete. (In this same example, if the researcher’s time estimate is correct, we’d be at a total of 2 hours a day for over 3 years.)
Why am I focused so much of the amount of time she may have spent on this? Are you asking why that matters? 😉 (Totally fine if you are!) As a stitcher myself, I know this to be an immersive and meditative process. I have the luxury of free time to spend on this work I love so much, and while I tend to be private about my work while it’s in progress, I don’t have to hide it from anyone either. Elizabeth’s life was vastly different from mine. This was not a girl with a lot of free time. Typical Victorian servants often worked between 12-15 hours a day, with only ½ day off per week. A kitchen maid may have only been allowed upstairs in the house once a day, to pray, and could have spent all her remaining time in a kitchen, cellar, or attic.
In addition to a severe lack of leisure time, these are not words she would have been free to share with those around her. Imagine writing a private and vulnerable diary entry in view of the people in your life… would you want them reading over your shoulder? I too have trusted fabric with some of my most private thoughts and hopes, and I can bear witness to the privateness of that action. I can only imagine Elizabeth stitching this alone at night- squeezing whatever time she could out of an already exhausting day, or maybe working on it during Sabbath Sundays when it may have been considered appropriate to do penance through stitching that would never become a practical household item.
Another question to explore is – WHY did she keep it all her life and how did it end up in the Victoria & Albert museum?
If you look at the larger photo of the sampler, you’ll see that it looks unfinished. She did not fill up the entire space, nor did she cut away the excess, or finish the edges to mark it as completed. No one can know for sure what her perspective was, we cannot go back and find these answers, but since this is a blog and not a scholarly article, I’m free to share with you what I imagine to be true.
I think the answer may be a simple one. Elizabeth may have stopped adding to this piece as her perspective shifted, as she aged and moved into new seasons of life, as hopefully she became surrounded by kinder, safer people. Perhaps it was a season that was somehow resolved for her and she didn’t feel the need to keep stitching in this way after a certain point. Maybe she kept the linen for the same reason I still have diaries from my childhood- it is the most tangible record of who she was as a young woman. This was a diary, and however painful the content- it was real, it was her, it was HERS. I’m also someone who has struggled with some mental health issues (mainly periods of severe anxiety). Mine arose well into adulthood, and while I didn’t share the struggles of Elizabeth’s young life, I can attest to the power of looking back on times when you weren’t sure you would make it- and standing strong years later seeing that you did. Just making it through, emerging into a future you weren’t sure you could have, is extraordinarily empowering- the best way ever to prove yourself wrong! Elizabeth lived into her 70’s, she had become a schoolteacher and raised a niece as her own daughter. We cannot know if her later years were happy ones, but we know that she at least survived the abuse of her youth, and poured her life into others. (While I’ve focused on just a few questions around Elizabeth’s text, I don’t mean to gloss over so many other prominent themes that could (and should) be explored- the role of religion/ religious trauma in her life and mental health; the loss of childhood; the utter sadness of an adult responding to a child’s pain with condemnation and judgement; the horrible abuse she suffered; or what we can infer about her views of God’s love and care. I’d love to continue the conversation on her text- let me know if you’d like a deeper dive into any of these areas!)
As to how this piece ended up safe & sound in the V&A, that’s also a story with some big unknowns. I couldn’t find any information on the provenance, so I reached out to the V&A directly and a very kind curator send me back the information that’s available in their records:
“Aside from what is on the online record, the only additional information we have is that in 1943 the donor initially wrote to the museum asking for a valuation on the object. She explained it had been in her family for many years, and the donor was over 70 at the time. It wasn't until many years later in 1956 that the object was officially acquired by the museum. The department was not initially impressed with the piece at the time, stating that its 'artistic interests are not particularly great', and paid a small sum of £5 for the piece.”
I think it’s so important for us to remember that for every piece of art that ends up in a museum collection, there are thousands of others that aren’t lucky enough to be preserved. I can only guess at the number of decision points along the way when someone handled this object and decided whether or not to keep it, sell it, discard it….. Even the great V&A didn’t think much of it back in the 1950’s! What would you have done with this if you found it in the attic of an ancestor, dusty, odd, and stark…? It’s an object without a clear place in polite society, but one I could never have discarded. It’s too personal, too sad, too raw. It asks to be protected, in ways that Elizabeth herself never was.
In the scholarly materials I’ve read about this Sampler, it seems that this piece has been neatly tucked into the category of embroidered text samplers . Elizabeth’s stark personal declarations are (to me) too quickly passed right over for this categorization to ring true. As I said in my last post- this is not a sampler! In general, samplers were more like school assignments than diary entries; meant to be seen and praised for their skill. Can you imagine stitching these words in 1830 and actually showing it to anyone? Even now, there’s a huge stigma in being open about personal pain, abuse, and mental health issues- how much more so in the 1830s? Elizabeth herself stitched that she was unable to confide her struggles in her family or friends, for fear they would not understand, or would judge her harshly.
As I see it, this work is a radical, naked, despairing, daring and hopeful confession by a girl who couldn’t bear the weight of the life she had, but found a way to go on despite her pain. Instead of shedding her own blood, she bled crimson thread into the soil of silent linen. This repetitive action, done bit by bit over hundreds or thousands of hours, must have brought her some relief. I, too have felt this kind of release, and relief in stitching, and I want to celebrate Elizabeth for her courage.
This is not a sampler- it’s a piece of radical feminine art way ahead of its time.
I first encountered the Sampler while doing research for a course in museum studies during graduate school. Up to that point, I had appreciated various types of embroidery as ‘pretty’ or ‘interesting’ objects, but had never seen this level of vulnerability in stitch. I was floored, my horizons were forever expanded, and KNEW I had to learn more- and start stitching- whatever my own heart needed to say. During that same research project I discovered other (mostly modern) pieces of embroidery and textile art that opened my perspective in equally powerful ways- all baring the souls of their creators and shining lights on important cultural and social issues. But Elizabeth’s Sampler- simple, open, unfiltered, and unapologetically REAL, changed me forever. And I am forever thankful. I’ve never seen this piece in person- but I hope to one day (anyone want to visit the V&A with me?!). In the meantime, I’ll keep revisiting it for all it can teach me.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for being so honest, and for all the others who helped to ensure that this linen was never discarded, so that all of us could send you our love, back across the centuries.
Have you ever felt like Elizabeth did? What creative outlets have helped you through your darkest hours? Have you ever asked yourself and God the questions she was brave enough to ask?
Would you be brave enough to voice them aloud or commit them to paper or fabric, music, clay, or canvas?
Would I?
Love to all & keep stitching,
LeahJoy
p.s. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this piece- please send me a comment or message!
p.p.s If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues or thoughts of suicide- PLEASE reach out for help. You are loved and needed, and there is help to found. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help
p.p.p.s I’ve shared a bit about how Elizabeth Parker has changed my life. In a future post we’ll dive into the ways she just might change yours, too.
“It asks to be protected, in ways Elizabeth herself never was.” This perfectly sums up this piece! Thank you for sharing all you know about this work. It is intriguing, thought-provoking & your perspective on it is enlightening! I’ll go to v&a with you anytime! 😁
So glad you enjoyed it! Let’s plan that trip!