Breakfast Links: Week of January 21, 2013

The January weather may be frigid, but our Breakfast Links are always the perfect way to warm up  your weekend. You'll find our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, photos, and articles, all gathered from the Twitterverse.
• Days before Pride & Prejudice is published in 1813, Jane Austen writes to sister Cassandra.
• To be or not to be married, 1887.
• A striking red and black 1890s ensemble.
• How to get your beard into a gas mask, 1939.
• Manet's forgotten, red-haired muse (and fellow artist): Victorine Meurent.
• The lost wolves of New England.
• Why did European men start (and stop) wearing high heels?
• Rare & charming children's art from 1868, found in the blank spaces of a ledger.
• Couples from the 1500s, together in love, lust, & greed.
• British First Day Covers of new Jane Austen commemorative stamps.
• During a cold spell in NYC, 1888, it was possible to cross the ice-bound East River on foot.
• Lovely WWI photograph shows amusement and relief away from the fighting, October 1918.
• Gossamer gowns: what to wear to an inaugural ball.
• Ye very olde Sauce Madame for duck, from the 14th c.
• Quinine smuggling dolls, guns hidden in cookies, & other tales of Civil War blockade runners.
• Toby Chien, author Colette's beloved dog and muse.
• Forget those modern shoes with the red soles - how about these 18th c. beauties with flowered heels?
• Everything was fake but her wealth: the strange story of rich NYC recluse Ida Wood.
• Gallery of women's tattoos, to confirm & upset your assumptions about America's gendered past.
• The Secret Mansion: haunting photos of a grand house abandoned & lost in time.
• What prospects existed in post WWI UK for a spinster like Downton Abbey's Lady Edith?
• LOLcats of the Middle Ages.
• A snowy panoramic view of the Tudor entrance to Hampton Court Palace.
• Fantastic woodcut of a dozen men getting drunk, 1648.
• The daughter of THE Mrs. Astor marries the son of a Confederate and two immense fortunes are joined.
• Happy birthday to designer Christian Dior, born this week in 1905; his extraordinary "Venus" ballgown.
• Celebrate with Prince Albert's Plum Pudding (surprisingly not a euphemism.)
• "Pestilent stuff": the Dime Novel War of 1884.
• "My face is finely ornamented": surviving smallpox inoculation, 1777.
• Helen Taft was the first First Lady to donate her dress to the Smithsonian, and it's beautiful.
• "The Queen is slowly sinking": the death of Queen Victoria, 22 January, 1901.
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