Proper Behavior at Lizzie's Home

Lizzie was happy to be back in North Bennington where she and John could bring up their three children in the house that she loved. As a typical upper class Victorian family, she and John followed the social customs of the time. Proper behavior was an important way for a family to show its place in society, and they had each been brought up to know how to act. There were certain rules of etiquette that they, like all polite people at the end of the 19th century followed.

Of course there was always the exception to the rule. When Lizzie's brother, Train, for example, came home from college to visit, he didn't behave very well. Charley Lincoln once wrote a letter to Lizzie describing her brother's behavior:

Wednesday. 8 ½ AM. Train is not up. I guess Olive [the cook] is glad he is not going to stay long. He violates all the rules of the house, breakfast in the library, Sunday dinner on Monday, suppers delayed for the train, pantry turned upside down in the still hours of the night, and gas left burning till Jane [the maid] turns them off. He went to Bennington Monday night, from there to Glastenbury with lumbermen and walked 4 miles in snow 1 foot deep.