The classic guide in a 21st century edition
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Why am I recommending a book first published in 1936 to you? Because it really cheered me up during a miserable time in my life when I knew I would soon be a divorcée living on my own.
Live Alone and Like It (known to its admirers as
LALI) was written by Marjorie Hillis, a journalist who had learnt the art of upskilling solo living, because, as she points out in the book:
So, she advises,
‘You need a plan.’
She lays out her suggestions in a twelve-point guide to make sure you get the best out of that life. Here’s a smattering of her style:
'Who do you think you are?'
Her starting point is to encourage you to create and foster a healthy and attractive self-image, and then find ways to live up to it in reality.
As she says, ‘You can live alone gaily, graciously, ostentatiously, dully, stolidly. Or feeling sorry for yourself.’
Put that way, you realise a lot can be magicked out of your own attitude, and she’s here to come up with suggestions.
‘When a lady needs a friend’
All about routes to making new acquaintances and friends.
Today’s woman can of course add in the Internet as a valuable source of what’s going on locally.
In my own LALI years, this was the way I discovered a local arts group, a film club, numerous social events, and a 10k walking club where one fateful day I met my husband.
‘Your leisure, if any’
There’s a trick to it: have at least one hobby that takes you out of your home (see above), and another that keeps you contentedly absorbed when indoors alone.
Both need to be pastimes you feel passionately about, not merely time-passers. This is where you experiment. I’m currently trying out ‘slow stitching’ courtesy of wattleandloop.com.
Marjorie’s also a great believer in travel for women.
‘Setting for a solo act’
Home should be *your* haven. This chapter is all about making sure your living space is a place that delights you, reflects your personality, and is inviting to visitors. Even on a small budget.
‘Pleasures of a single bed’
Quote: ‘You can have more fun in bed than anywhere else, and we are not being vulgar. Even going to bed alone can be alluring.’
She shows you how to make bed not the place you stay in because you’re depressed but treating it like your own, personal, royal boudoir with emphasis on beautiful bedlinen, fetching night-attire, and delicious fragrance. A place of conscious comfort and renewal:
As she says, 'This is particularly advisable if you don’t want to keep on going to bed alone for the rest of your life, but do it anyway.’
She makes a stylishly-presented breakfast in bed sound like heaven on earth and I'm longing to give it a try if I can find an alluring bedjacket — most of the ones I've seen on the Internet look warm but frumpy.
‘Will you, or won’t you?’
This was 1936 yet Marjorie was broad-minded and non-committal on the subject of sex and the single girl, though also wise as a serpent on the downsides.
'A lady and her liquor'
A chapter straight out of the era of
Mad Men
and
The Cocktail Hour. She includes recipes for classic cocktails and accompanying nibbles, not forgetting the Mornings After and the fine shading every woman of style learns to recognise between Enough and Too Much.
‘The great uniter’ (ie food and entertaining)
‘Having three square meals a day is not enough — they ought to be three meals you can get a kick out of.’
She's all for the delights of solo or companionable deliciousness.
‘You’d better skip this one’
Marjorie Hillis must be unique as an author in actually urging you *not* to read something. Which of course makes you curious as to its hidden content.
It’s about how to budget your way to an even more stylish and enjoyable life. It certainly influenced my P2YL money technique during my own single years.
Live Alone and Like It
is laced with ‘case studies’ of a myriad of LALI women and their lifestyles, and how they adapted the ideas to suit their personalities and circumstances (or didn't).
The effect of the book on me? It began the process of seeing myself in a different light at a time my post-divorce morale was in the gutter. I vowed that one day, if I was out of the woods, I'd pass on anything I found helpful to other women, and this book is one of them.
Marjorie sums it up with, ‘You will probably not have to live alone too long and like it,' and she spoke truer than she knew: three years after the book’s publication, and at the age of 49, Ms Hillis bade a fond farewell to the LALI lifestyle, marrying and becoming Marjorie Hillis Roulston.
She wrote several more wise and witty books, including Orchids On Your Budget: Living Smartly On What You Have
and
You Can Start Over, all about starting anew after divorce or widowhood. Equally enjoyable books I'm looking forward to reviewing in the future.
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