Cha-ching! A Splendid 1894 Cash Register

Susan reporting,

In these days of credit card scanner, swipers, and readers, I bet there are more than a few of our readers who won't know what this is. It's a cash register, and an extravagantly beautiful one at that.

Made in 1894 by the National Cash Register Company, this impressive nickel-plated register (Model 79) was an example of the latest in retail. By the end of the 19thc, Americans had more cash (and more credit) to spend, and stores had grown in size and splendor. Consumers were tempted with a wealth of increasingly mass-produced products, all presented in an elegant setting that encouraged the experience of shopping - itself a 19thc verb. This over-sized register, gleaming and ornamented like a piece of fine silver, would definitely have been part of the experience.

But cash registers were initially designed not for the sake of the customers, but to combat the petty thievery of clerks by keeping track of transactions. According to the museum's web site, the register "has three columns of keys for entering numbers, and a fourth column of function keys. The operating crank is on the right side, the cash drawer is below, and a receipt dispenser is on the left side. Pop-up indicators above the keys indicate the total purchase." High-tech, indeed.

The register is currently on display as part the "Art in Industry" exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

Photograph ©2018 Susan Holloway Scott

Breakfast Links: Week of September 24, 2018

Breakfast Links are served! Our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Following the fashions: a basic American pastime.
• Paintings of unruly 19thc children by Andre Henri Dargelas (1828-1906)
• The history of surgical gloves includes a love story.
• Every night, the U.S. Constitution is lowered into an atomic-bomb-proof vault to protect it from thieves and terrorists.
• Image: Skulls of medieval soldiers, fused with the chain mail they'd been wearing when they died.
• A 17thc sailor's shameful confession discovered in his journal - though there's a kind-of happy ending.
• Stylish woman's hat c1880 cleverly uses pleated silk trim to replicate the feathers (or wings) of endangered birds.
• Teeth whitening in the Victorian era, from charcoal paste to sulfuric acid.
• Image: Road-trip beauties posing with a car (and some canoe paddles) c1920.
• Samuel Pepys was a 17thc visitor: the Cheesecake House in Hyde Park.
• Newly digitized online: 1,600 pre-1900 books on astrology, magic, alchemy, and the occult.
• Exercise for women in the early 19thc.
• A serial killer on the island of Jamaica, 1773.
• Image: The 18thc Shell Cottage, Carton House, County Kildare.
• Founded in London in 1875: the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants.
• How the Rolling Stones in 1968 ended up at 17thc Swarkestone Pavilion.
• While Europe's oldest intact book was found in the coffin of a saint.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday Video: Inside an 1885 Dinner Dress

Susan reporting,

This short but fascinating video features the work of the Costume Institute Conservation Laboratory of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The star of this video, however, is this c1885 silk dinner dress, right. Made by New York dressmaker Mme. Grapanche (her label is still stitched inside the dress), the dress represents the most extreme version of a bustle - that huge draped and constructed extension to the backside of the dress, that would have been worn over a cage-like or padded support tied around the wearer's waist. Of course, this was a high-fashion version, worn by an elite woman with a taste for drama (Madame Olenska!), but the bustle style in less exaggerated forms was popular among 1880s women of every class.

Here Jessica Regan, assistant curator in the Costume Institute, shows us what was sewn inside the dress to help support so much fabric and style. Of course, modern fashionistas might look at this in bewilderment: how does one sit in all that bustled splendor? We have the answer right here, in another Friday Video.

For another analysis of this dress, see this blog post from the Museum at FIT.

The Landau Carriage

1809 Landau

Loretta reports:

My characters get from here to there in various horse-drawn vehicles, but mainly I've posted about public transportation, like hackney cabs and coaches. Privately owned vehicles have been rather neglected, although I do offer images on my Pinterest page.

In A Duke in Shining Armor, the heroine arrives in a landau to collect her wayward duke. The landau was a coachman-driven vehicle, pulled by two to four horses. It carried four passengers, and was more luxurious than the curricles and cabriolets that dashing heroes tend to drive in our stories. The latter are more like sports cars. The former are more like luxury sedans.

Something to bear in mind: Unlike today, vehicles did not come off an assembly line. They were individually made, and the owner might have been closely involved in the design.* Consequently, not all landaus look alike. Earlier ones were often built on square lines, but not always, as the 1809 Ackermann illustration, above, shows. Some interesting aspects of the landau, as pointed out here, are the seating design, allowing the two pairs of passengers to face each other, and the two folding hoods. According to Discovering Horse-Drawn Carriages, “In the early days, the hoods were made of harness leather and fell back a mere forty-five degrees.” When these early hoods were up, the interior could be hot, stuffy, and smelly, thanks to the oil and blacking used to keep the leather nice and shiny. In later vehicles, the hoods folded back flat.

Square Landau

A much later and fancier vehicle, one of the royal family’s Ascot landaus, was the carriage the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (aka Harry & Meghan) used for their wedding.

Here’s a late Victorian landau from the Horse and Carriage Museum Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, France. And this is one you can buy.

You can read more about landaus here at All Things Georgian.

*This is why some vehicles, like the Stanhope gig, are named after people.

Images: Patent Landau, Ackermann’s Repository, February 1809; Square Landau, NEN Gallery, Luton Culture Museum Service.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed. And just so you know, if you order an item through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.

Breakfast Links: Week of September 17, 2018

Breakfast Links are served! Our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• "Telling the bees": In 19thc New England, it was held to be essential to whisper to beehives of a loved one's death.
•Wynflaed and the price of fashion: a rare 11thc manuscript will describes one woman's wardrobe.
• Alexander Hamilton and the lacemaking industry of Ipswich, MA.
• Felix Nadar in the gondola of a balloon - and how this carte-de-viste was intended to help promote his costly ballooning ventures.
• Not for the shy: spectacular tartan Lord of the Isles suit worn by the Duke of Windsor.
• Image: Rose gathered between the trenches on the Western Front, 1918, and more on the 19-year-old soldier who sent it home to his sweetheart.
• Jane Austen's curious banking story makes her an apt face for the £10 note.
• Creole comforts and French connections: a case study in 18thc Caribbean dress.
• The 10thc teenaged English princess who defied a bishop over fashion.
• Ten vintage canes with amazing hidden features.
• Every picture tells a story - or does it? Examining two photos of romanticized train stations.
• A day in the life of a 19thc East India Company Director.
• The longest - and the shortest - reigns of the Middle Ages.
• Abraham Lincoln and the "sublime heroism" of British cotton workers.
• Old London landmarks: Fendall's Coffee House and Family Hotel.
• The story continues - much more about the Dido Elizabeth Belle portrait.
• The continuing power of literary relics: Shelley's ashes and Byron's hair.
• Rediscovering a missing evening dress worn by Queen Alexandra.
• Just for fun: the peekaboo cockatiel.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday Video: Recreating Madame Récamier's Coiffure

Chinard, Mme Récamier

Loretta reports:

I have mentioned Madame Récamier before, mainly in connection with furniture (here and here). She is quite well known among Regency/Napoleonic era aficionados, both for her portraits and her salon.

The Gérard and David portraits of her will be familiar to many. However, being mainly interested in the chaise longue, I hadn’t really noticed the marble bust by Joseph Chirard, until I came upon Janet Stephens’s video. Ms Stephens has posted several YouTube videos explaining Greek and Roman hair styles, which in turn help us get a better sense of the powerful influence of Greek and Roman statuary on this period of fashion in Europe and America.

Video by Janet Stephens: Authentic Napoleonic Hairstyle: MadameRecamier

Image: Bust of Juliette Récamier by Joseph Chinard, in "Musée des Beaux-arts" of Lyon (France), photo by Philippe Alès, Creative Commons license.
Please click on images to enlarge.
Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be. To watch the video, please click on the title to this post (which will take you to our blog) or the video title (which will take you to YouTube).

"Moral Poison": The Evils of Reading Novels, 1864

Susan reporting,

Loretta and I have written so many posts for this blog over the years - nearly a decade's worth! - that we've forgotten a good many of them. Fortunately, our readers haven't. This one surfaced yesterday on Twitter (thank you, Lucy Paquette), and I thought it deserved another appearance here as I wallow through deadline-itis.

In an earlier post, I shared an 18thc warning against women reading romances. By 1860, those who worried about everyone else's reading habits had expanded their concerns, including all novels read not only by women, but by men as well. Apparently novels were dangerous.

The warnings below come from a religious tract published in New York in 1864. A Pastor's Jottings; or, Striking Scenes during a Ministry of Thirty-Five Years was printed anonymously because, as the prefatory note explains, the author "could thus write with more freedom." That same note assures us that "the statements of this volume are all literally true."

Among the many things (this book is nearly 350 pages long) that distress this unknown pastor, novels - that "moral poison" - are right there at the top of the list: "The minds of novel readers are intoxicated, their rest is broken, their health shattered, and their prospect of usefulness blighted."

But he doesn't want us simply to take his word for it. Apparently even novels by Charles Dickens are suspect, and he quotes the famous educator Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby School fame to prove it:

Childishness in boys even of good ability seems to be a growing fault; and I do not know what to ascribe it, except to the great number of exciting books of amusement, like Pickwick, Nickleby, Bentley's Magazine, etc...that leave [a boy] totally palled, not only for his regular work, but for literature of all sorts.

Nor are women exempt from the terrible influences of novel-reading. In fact (remember, this is all LITERALLY TRUE), according to the pastor, women suffer even more:

Listen to the evidence given by a physician in Massachusetts: 'I have seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes of fictitious trash, poring day after day and night after night over highly wrought scenes and skillfully portrayed pictures of romance, until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and restless, and her mind wandered and was lost – the light of intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted. She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels.'

But insanity is only the beginning:

Not very long since, a double suicide was committed...by a young married couple from Ohio, who were clearly proved to be led to ruin and death by these most pernicious books....Police officers too in London and some of our own large cities, have given mournful evidence of the results of some of these novels when dramatized and performed on the stage, as leading to burglaries and murder.

Suicide, madness, burglaries, and murder! As an unrepentant novelist, I clearly have much to answer for. While for obvious reasons, I don't want you to see the error of your ways, but if you'd like to read more of the Unnamed Pastor's edifying work, here's the link to his book, available to read for free via Google Books.

Thanks to Clive Thompson, who shared quotes from A Pastor's Jottings on Twitter.

Above: The Pink Domino; print made by William Henry Mote after Frank Stone, c1833-1835. The British Museum.

Ladies' Facilities in the 1700s to 1900s

Loretta reports:

In the course of trying to get a bit more information about this Victorian era public urinal, at the Museum of London, I wound up in a dead end. All I know about it is more or less what I’d learned about the public facilities in Paris.

However, I did discover more about how and where ladies answered Nature’s call during the 18th and 19th centuries. The short answer: It wasn't easy.

These days, we are frustrated by the long lines outside ladies’ lavatories: Why don’t they install more stalls? But at least we can find rather nice facilities. In London, for instance, I found such interesting and elegant ones that I started photographing them.

In the time of my stories, ladies’ public facilities were not so elegant, to the extent that they existed at all.

According to the Museum of London’s feature on Vauxhall Gardens:

“Respectable’ women, in particular, were suddenly in a situation where access to a discreet and reasonably hygienic toilet facility could not be taken for granted. In Vauxhall, a communal women’s privy appears to have existed, and was illustrated in a satirical print by the artist Thomas Rowlandson, although this may be an exaggerated representation – Rowlandson was known for his scatological and titillating images of women. Still, many women – and men – must have taken advantage of the garden’s dark corners and convenient plants.”

The Inside of Lady's Garden at Vauxhall (1788)

Susan has discussed this Rowlandson illustration in detail here. You can read the full Museum of London article here.

It's rather shocking to discover that it wasn’t until the 1920s that busineses began providing accommodations for women . This was also, I notice, about the time that women got the vote.

Rowlandson, Sympathy, or A Family On A Journey Laying The Dust (1784),

Images: Victorian urinal at Museum of London photograph by me; Rowlandson, The Inside of Lady's Garden at Vauxhall (1788), courtesy Yale University Library; Thomas Rowlandson, Sympathy, or A Family On A Journey Laying The Dust (1784), courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

From the Archives: A Beautiful (and Romantic) 18th c. Man's Shirt

Susan reporting,

Today I'm reposting one of the breathtaking examples of needlework from The Diligent Needle: Instrument of Profit, Pleasure, & Ornament, a 2014 exhibition at Winterthur Museum. 

Hung against a dark wall, this 18th c. man's linen shirt was almost sculptural in its pristine perfection. I've written other posts about similar shirts here and here, so I won't repeat how they're made, how often they're laundered, or who wore them.

So why write about another one here (except, of course, because it's so stunningly beautiful)? While most men of every class purchased shirts made by tailors (remember that at this time, the primary cost of any garment lay in the fabric, not the labor), shirts were one of the few garments that wives and mothers could, and did, make at home. The economical geometry of 18th c. shirts made them comparatively easy to cut out and sew, and the voluminous shape did away with any challenging issues of fitting. The simple construction focused the attention on the stitching, and an accomplished seamstress could display her gifts for perfect tiny stitches and neat hems, left. Fancy needlework was admired, but skillful plain sewing like this was almost considered a wifely virtue.

Shirts were also intimate garments, worn next to the skin, and for most men at this time who still had not adopted the new-ish fashion for underdrawers, the tails of shirts also served as underwear. All of these reasons made a well-stitched shirt a popular gift from a bride or newlywed wife to her husband, and they are often mentioned in letters and diaries of the time. A new wife could happily clothe her husband with her own labors and romantically think of him with every stitch, while he in turn would also be proud to wear a shirt that showed his new wife was accomplished and frugal.

Although the curators at Winterthur don't know either who made or wore this shirt, their guess is that it was one of these "newlywed" shirts. Not only does its sparkling condition hint at a shirt that was perhaps put aside as a keepsake, but the stitcher also added a small, sentimental touch: at the bottom of the neck-opening, serving as a reinforcement, is a small appliqued heart, right. Awww....

Above: Shirt, maker unknown, linen, probably made in America, c1790-1820. Winterthur Museum.
Photographs © 2014 by Susan Holloway Scott.

Breakfast Links: Week of September 10, 2018

Breakfast Links are served! Our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Why don't more boys read Little Women?
• Aretha Franklin, and the only hat that matters.
• Paths of glory: the road to lasting fame and fortune rarely runs straight.
• The Georgian Post Office played a major role in espionage,  doing what the Secret Services do today.
• Dreams and telepathy at the end of the American Civil War.
• An Indian chintz gown: fashion, status, and slavery in 18thc America.
• Image: An exquisite hairnet of gold, a superb example of a Hellenistic goldsmith's talent and skill, c200-150 BC.
• Coffee houses, taverns, tea, and chocolate in Restoration London.
• An extended family of stay-makers (corset-makers) living and working in 18thc London.
• Real estate history: when Trinity Church ruled lower Manhattan.
• Image: Silk damask gauze shoes from Chinese royalty that look surprisingly modern - yet are 800 years old.
• Imposters in history: sixteen famous con-artists and pretenders.
• Culture in the early American classroom: a failed attempt at assimilation.
• Fashion + competitive masculinity = the codpiece.
• Elizabeth Keckley: businesswoman, philanthropist, and dressmaker to a president's wife.
• Image: From these drawings, it's clear that 19thc artist Gericault had a very bite-y cat.
• The dipping and drinking wells of Hyde Park.
• Film star: a classic Baltimore movie palace shines again.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday Video: A Young Dutch Woman Dresses for Day in 17thc Delft

Susan reporting,

Here's the latest lovely fashion history video from our friends at Crow's Eye Productions. The layers and layers of clothing worn by an elite Dutch woman in the 17thc served not only to display her family's wealth, but also kept her warm in a damp, unheated house. I found myself thinking of the Dutch immigrants in New Amsterdam (later to become New York City) at the same time, and how welcome those layers must have been in the New World, too.

There's also a wonderful surprise ending to this video that delighted the nerdy-history-girl-art-historian in me. Wait for it!

Many thanks to costume historian Pauline Loven and director Nick Loven of Crow's Eye Productions for sharing their work with us.

If you received this video via email, you may be seeing an empty space or black box where the video should be. Please click here to view the video.

Goodwin's Court, London: A Little Time Travel

Loretta reports:

I’ve just been reading a history of Kensington and Chelsea and shaking my head over the numbers of old buildings that have disappeared. So have streets. While my imagination is strong, trying to get a strong visual sense of an area is sometimes very difficult. The world in which my characters lived is long gone. In London one can certainly find pre-Victorian houses as well as venerable public buildings (St. Paul’s doesn’t seem likely to go anywhere) but they’re surrounded and often overwhelmed by, primarily, late Victorian to 20th & 21st-century architecture. Streets have to accommodate automobiles—zillions of them—and they are not traveling at horse-and-carriage speed.

Standing inside Apsley House, with tour guide Kristine Hughes Patrone, I had to really work to get a sense of what the Duke of Wellington saw from his window. For instance, Hyde Park isn’t the same; neither is Hyde Park Corner; and the Marble Arch is not where it used to be. However, the once-controversial statue of Achilles (which I’ve used more than once in my books) is right where it’s supposed to be. So one starts with the existent and mentally paints in the rest. It works, but oh, wouldn't I like to travel invisibly in a bubble, and actually be there.

Sometimes one can come close, though. One day, following a reader’s suggestion, I made my way to Goodwin’s Court in Covent Garden.

Here was a little slice of my characters’ London: the kinds of shop fronts they might have gazed into, and the gas lights that would have illuminated (not very well) the place at night.

Though it’s one small court in London, it’s easily the kind of space I can imagine, say, a lot of troublemakers bursting out from, or a pair of friends stepping in to, in order have a conversation at a time when the streets would have been extremely noisy. There are other quiet little corners that don’t seem to have changed very much from the early 1800s. A step off the beaten track sometimes does seem like a step through a portal into the past. Goodwin’s Court is one of the better examples

You can see more images and read more about Goodwin’s Court here and here.

All photos copyright © 2018 Walter M. Henritze III
Please click on images to enlarge.

A Silk Vest Honoring the Marquis de Lafayette, c1824

Susan reporting,

Yesterday marked the 241st anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine, a pivotal confrontation in the American Revolution between General George Washington and his Continental Army and General Sir William Howe, commander of the British troops. I've written posts about the battle several times before (here and here. Aside from Brandywine's significance as the largest land battle of the Revolution, it also marked the debut in the war of a young volunteer from France.

An aristocratic idealist with a military background, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) was only nineteen when he met General Washington in August 1777. Already commissioned by the American Congress as a major general, Lafayette was not at first given troops to command, but instead became a member of Washington's staff. At Brandywine, he saw his first experience in the field; he was shot in the leg, yet still was cited by Washington for his "bravery and military ardor." Lafayette went on to play a key role in the war, not only as an officer and close friend to Washington, but also as a diplomat who helped secure the French ships and soldiers that ultimately tipped the scales for an American victory. He was celebrated as one of the most popular heroes of the Revolution, and remains so to this day. (How many of you began singing Guns and Ships in your head at the mere mention of his name?)

Lafayette is included in a wonderful small exhibition currently on display (through July 9, 2019) at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Through a well-chosen selection of paintings, maps, and artifacts, The American Revolution: A World War explains how the Revolution was only part of a global shift in the balance of power, war, and conquest that marked the 18thc world. As a Frenchman fighting the British with the American forces and Spanish allies, Lafayette is prominently featured.

But it's not only his wartime exploits that are highlighted. Lafayette's triumphant return to America in 1824 is also included. To quote from the exhibition:

"In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to the United States at the invitation of President James Monroe. Over fourteen months, he visited all twenty-four states....[President Monroe's invitation came as America] approached the 50th anniversary of its independence. He hoped the general's iconic presence would help rekindle the nation's "revolutionary spirit" and commitment to unity, which seemed to be slipping away. The trip was a smashing success, but it did not moderate the divisive 1824 presidential contest between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson."

Americans celebrated Lafayette's visit with all kinds of souvenirs. Much like modern Americans wear t-shirts printed with the names and faces of their heroes, Lafayette's portrait was emblazoned on ribbons, dresses, and gloves, as well as the vest shown here:

"Hosting the Marquis de Lafayette at a New York banquet, Revolutionary War veteran Matthew Clarkson wore this vest covered with the general's image. During his sojourn, Lafayette attended hundreds of banquets, balls, and celebrations."

Though the Marquis was far too well-bred to record his thoughts about his host, I wonder what it must have been like to sit through a banquet across from a man wearing your face and name all over his chest....

Above left and detail right: Vest worn at banquet for Marquis de Lafayette, 1824-1836, National Museum of American History. Photos ©2018 Susan Holloway Scott.
Lower right: Le marquis de La Fayette en capitaine du régiment de Noailles by Louis Léopold Boilly, 1788, Musée national du château de Versailles. Image ©RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource NY.

Fashions for Sometime in 1896

Walking Dresses 1896

Loretta reports:

My searches online produced a wealth of 1890s fashion plates. Unfortunately, nobody ever saved the fashion descriptions. However, what turned up in the Met collections is, despite the lack of documentation, unexpectedly enlightening.There are descriptions, in French, which I leave you to translate. But what’s unusual about these images is that they appear to be colorized photographs: in other words, these aren’t the stylized images that portray anatomically impossible women’s bodies (please compare and contrast with images in my post of October 2016). I imagine some 19th century version of photoshopping went on, but at least these offer a much better sense of the clothing.

La Mode Pratique was a lovely magazine. If you’re interested in 1880s-1920s French fashion, you might want to look at this blog for samples of the pages. At the bottom of the page are links to more posts about the magazine.

Evening Dress 1896

Images courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dresses 1896

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.