Italians Serenade London for Christmas in the 1820s

Lazzari, Trompe l'oeil Still Life 18th C

Loretta reports:

There are a couple of interesting bits in this excerpt from Hone’s Every-Day Book. The first part reminds us that ordinary Londoners didn’t have anything like the access we do to music. If you were well off, you could go to the opera, ballet, or theater, or you would dance at Almack’s to some of the latest pieces from abroad. For ordinary people, London had its street musicians, true, as well as cheaper theatrical entertainments. Italian music by Italian musicians, however, seems to have been rather uncommon in the 1820s.

The second item I’d call to your attention is Hone’s reference, a little further on, to Londoners’ attitude toward Italian musicians a generation earlier, which this Rowlandson image illustrates. It is a far cry from the gentler and appreciative tone of Hone's report.

"Previous to Christmas 1825, a trio of foreign minstrels appeared in London, ushering in the season with melody from instruments seldom performed on in the streets. These were Genoese with their guitars.  Musicians of this order are common in Naples and all over Italy; at the carnival time they are fully employed, and at other periods are hired to assist in those serenades whereof English ladies hear nothing, unless they travel, save by the reports of those who publish accounts of their adventures. The three now spoken of took up their abode in London, at the King’s head public-house, in Leather-lane, from whence ever and anon, to wit, daily they sallied forth to ‘discourse most excellent music.’ They are represented in the engraving below, from a sketch hastily taken by a gentleman who was of a dinner party, by whom they were called into the house of a street in the suburbs.

Italian Minstrels in London,
At Christmas, 1825

Ranged in a row, with guitars slung
Before them thus, they played and sung:
Their instruments and choral voice
Bide each glad guest still more rejoice;
And each guest wished again to hear
Their wild guitars and voices clear."

Images: Sebastiano Lazzari: Trompe-l'œil Still Life, 18th century; illustrations and clipping from The Every-Day Book or Guide to the Year, William Hone, first published 1826

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

Happy Holidays!

Vernon, Season's Greetings

Susan & Loretta report:

‘Tis the season—and with suitably jolly and joyful spirits, the Two Nerdy History Girls are going to take our annual holiday break, to spend more time with our families and less time on social media. We may pop into the blog now and again with a picture or two and maybe a few words, but regularly scheduled blogging will not resume until 2018.

We thank you for continuing to share our historical enthusiasms, for encouraging us to continue, and for reading our books as well. They’re the reason we started blogging in the first place: all those bits of historical reality that wouldn’t fit neatly into our fiction but we just had to share. How lucky we are to have found so many like-minded readers!

Dear Readers, we wish you a very happy holiday season, and a splendid New Year. May it be a bright, healthy, and happy one for all of you.

Image: Émile Vernon, Season’s Greetings, courtesy Wikipedia

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: The Unsupervised Tailor's Apprentice & the Christmas Coat for a Cat, c. 1775

Susan reporting,

Most memoirs written by veterans of the Revolutionary War concentrate on glorious battles won, comrades lost, and patriotic fervor, and the memoirs of James Potter Collins (1763-1844) are no different. Born in Tryon County, NC, Collins enlisted in a local militia company at the age of seventeen, and saw action in several of the most important battles of the southern campaigns. But Collins's memoirs also include this entertaining anecdote from his days as a twelve-year-old tailor's apprentice with a bit too much unsupervised time.

"I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends...while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit. 

"Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day's work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in."

–– Autobiography of a Revolutionary Soldier, by James Potter Collins, published 1859

With his own master away from the shop for the holiday, Michael McCarty, above, a tailor's apprentice in the Historic Trades program, Colonial Williamsburg, was inspired to copy Collins' achievement, and make a miniature red hunting coat for his own cat. The coat was made to measure like every 18th c. gentleman's coat would have been, and cut and sewn entirely by hand of fine red woolen, trimmed in black with tiny covered buttons and gold-thread buttonholes. And just like young Collins' cat-coat, Michael's handiwork was on display in the shop window throughout the Christmas season, below left – although someday I'd really like to see it on the cat, too.

Update: I visited Colonial Williamsburg this past weekend, and although the tailors have now moved further down Duke of Gloucester Street to a new shop of their own, I'm happy to report that their holiday decorations still include the little red cat's coat, prominently pinned in the window.

Photographs copyright 2013 by Susan Holloway Scott. 

Dickens and the Cratchit Family's Christmas Pudding

Mrs. Cratchit by Arthur Rackham

Loretta reports:

I haven’t yet seen the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, but no one needs another movie to associate Charles Dickens with the holiday, thanks to his story, A Christmas Carol.

This past summer, while in London, I spent a few hours touring the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street. Among many items claiming my attention was the kitchen, because we Nerdy History Girls are always curious about everyday life. This house, which reflects the author’s lifestyle when he was just beginning to be famous, is very much a middle-class household, considerably upscale from that of Mr. Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit.

I offer some images from the kitchen, and leave you to imagine the process of making a Christmas pudding, even in this comfortable household. Then, please imagine what it might have been like for Mrs. Cratchit in her humbler abode. As a museum sign pointed out, “The Cratchit family had only one small pudding, but in a household such as 48 Doughty Street, there were often many spare puddings, cooked and stored for use at other celebrations throughout the year. Filled with spirits, old ale and spices, the puddings were well preserved on larder shelves and were even believed to improve in taste as they aged.”

Yes, that's the kitchen sink

But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses— to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough 1 Suppose it should break in turning out ! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid All sorts of horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding ! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly —with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding ! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up.
—“A Christmas Carol,” from The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume 13

Hedgehogs used for insect control

Photos of Charles Dickens Museum copyright © Loretta Chekani 2017
Illustration of Mrs. Cratchit carrying in the pudding by Arthur Rackham for 1915 edition.
Please click on images to enlarge.

Friday Video: A Victorian Christmas & Victorian Dolls

Loretta reports:

Looking for some holiday-type historical footage for the Friday video, I came upon these stereoscopic images of staged, late-Victorian Christmas celebrations. Many of the images seem a little eerie to me. But then, Victorian images often are. In this case, too, the strange “animation,” combined with the stereoscopic effect, heightens the sensation.

But I was struck by the little girls cradling their dolls, an image that remains familiar and sweet.



Then I remembered the photos of Victorian toys—mainly dolls and doll furniture—I took in September at the Provincetown Museum, which is part of the Pilgrim Monument.* I could picture little girls on Christmas morning, lovingly holding these dolls when they were new.


*No, I didn’t climb to the top of the monument. There’s quite a lovely panoramic view on the website.

 

Video: 3D Stereoscopic Photographs of Christmas in the Victorian Era (1889-1902)


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. Please click on images to enlarge.

From the Archives: Mistletoe Madness, 1796

Susan reporting:

In modern holiday celebrations, mistletoe has become something of a kitsch-y joke, the inevitable prop for I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus humor.

But in the 1790s, when the print, left, was published, mistletoe still had an aura of wickedness, even danger. The ancient Druidic traditions linking mistletoe and fertility had not been forgotten, and kissing beneath the mistletoe was thought to lead to promiscuity, or even - shudder! - marriage.

Certainly the four merry young  couples in this print appear to be enjoying themselves. Some scholarly descriptions refer to this as a dance scene, and perhaps it does show nothing more than a particularly rollicking country dance.

Still, I can't help but think that at any moment some stern-faced, indignant elder is going to appear in the doorway and demand to know what exactly is going on down here. I'm guessing the artist thought that, too, from the caption he added to the bottom: "Whilst Romp loving Miss is haul'd about/With gallantry robust." (The attribution to Milton is incorrect; the line is from a poem by the 18th c. Scottish poet James Thomson.) In any event, there's no doubt that these are romp-loving misses being haul'd about by their robust gallants. No wonder Christmas mistletoe was so popular!

Above: The mistletoe, or, Christmas gambols, by Edward Penny, 1796, London. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Friday Video: Making a Plum Pudding, c1775

Susan reporting,

Since we're officially in the holiday season now, it seems like the appropriate time to share a video on how to make a traditional plum, or hunter's - the same pudding goes by different names - pudding. This is one of many excellent 18thc cooking videos produced by Townsends, an American purveyor of all kinds of 18thc and 19thc necessities for re-enactors and anyone who relishes the past, from reproduction wool cloaks to hunting knives to research books to (as mentioned in this video) the proper kidney suet for puddings.

Here you'll learn not only how to make a proper Georgian-style pudding, but also the histories of many of the ingredients. Who knew 18thc raisins were so different from their modern day descendants?

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

Holiday Break

Holiday greeting card

Loretta & Isabella report:

As mentioned on Friday, we’re taking our annual break from social media to enjoy in-person holiday festivities with our families. We’ll be back on the first Monday of 2016, and we hope you’ll rejoin us as we begin yet another nerdy history year. Thank you for continuing to encourage us!

We wish you the most joyous of holiday seasons and a New Year filled with all kinds of good things, historical and otherwise.

Image of what is apparently a news carrier’s greeting card—appropriate, we thought, for the 2NHG bringers of old news. Dated between 1880-90. Image courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

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.

Christmas Shopping in 1833

Hunt, A Lady Reading

Loretta reports:

In the early 19th century, Christmas wasn’t even close to the gigantic consumer event it is today. “20 Great Gift Ideas Under $25” or “50 Must-Have Gifts under $100” or some other list didn’t appear in every periodical, and holiday sales were not ubiquitous. Or even existent, apparently.

But sellers did offer a gentle nudge here and there. In the advertising pages of the December 1833 Court Journal, I came upon these.











 
Painting: William Henry Hunt, A Lady Reading (aka A Lady Reading; Mrs.

William Hunt), ca. 1835, courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

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: Mistletoe Madness, 1796

Isabella reporting:

In modern holiday celebrations, mistletoe has become something of a kitsch-y joke, the inevitable prop for I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus humor.

But in the 1790s, when the print, left, was published, mistletoe still had an aura of wickedness, even danger. The ancient Druidic traditions linking mistletoe and fertility had not been forgotten, and kissing beneath the mistletoe was thought to lead to more promiscuity, or even - shudder! - marriage.

Certainly the four merry young  couples in this print appear to be enjoying themselves. Some scholarly descriptions refer to this as a dance scene, and perhaps it does show nothing more than a particularly rollicking country dance.

Still, I can't help but think that at any moment some stern-faced, indignant elder is going to appear in the doorway and demand to know what exactly is going on down here. I'm guessing the artist thought that, too, from the caption he added to the bottom: "Whilst Romp loving Miss is haul'd about/With gallantry robust." (The attribution to Milton is incorrect; the line is from a poem by the 18th c. Scottish poet James Thomson.) In any event, there's no doubt that these are romp-loving misses being haul'd about by their robust gallants. No wonder Christmas mistletoe was so popular!

Above: The mistletoe, or, Christmas gambols, by Edward Penny, 1796, London. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

From the Archives: Time to Bake Your Rich Cake for Twelfth Night

Isabella reporting:

A worthy repeat post for seasonal celebrations from our archives....

If you were the cook for a great house in the 17th-early 19th centuries, or simply a woman who lived in a sufficiently prosperous household, you'd be baking your Rich Cake, left, for Twelfth Night celebrations now. The Christmas holidays were also a popular time for weddings,and the Rich Cake would be the wedding cake of choice, too.

Celebratory cakes of the past were not the frothy, towering constructions of piped and colored icing that they are now. What made them festive was the lavishness of their ingredients, not their outer display. These cakes would be rich with eggs and butter and sugar, candied fruit and costly imported spices, brandy and sherry. With eggs as the only leavening, the texture would be dense to modern tastes, more of a cross between our pound cake and a fruit cake. But because the ingredients were fresh (or freshly ground), there'd be none of the chemical-preservative flavor that makes many 21st century fruitcakes such bad jokes.

Rich Cakes were often baked in a Turk's-head pan, shaped much like contemporary Bundt pans. Once unmolded, they could be wrapped in cloth and soaked with more liquor to develop their flavor and moistness. By the time the cakes were served in late December or January, they would truly be worth their star status on the holiday table.

During a recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg, the cooks in the kitchen of the Governor's Palace were baking the Rich Cakes for Twelfth Night. I was there for the final unmolding, right, a process that apparently involves exactly the same held-breaths and crossed fingers familiar to modern bakers. But as you can see, the cake slipped free with nary a crumb left behind.

If you'd like to try making a Rich Cake yourself, Colonial Williamsburg has put the recipe that they use (from Hannah Glasse's classic 18th c. cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy) on their Historic Foodways site. In case the non-specific nature of an 18th c. recipe is too daunting, the site provides a modern version, too.

Photographs ©2012 Susan Holloway Scott.

Theodore Roosevelt, the Bears, & the Oaks

Loretta reports:

During my recent visit to the Historic Paine Estate’s Holiday Open House,

I came upon a small room filled with teddy bears. Of course I wondered what this had to do with the Paine family—or was it simply holiday décor?

A little of both, it turns out.

The name “teddy bear” derives from an incident involving Theodore Roosevelt and a bear he refused to shoot.

But what did Theodore Roosevelt have to do with the Paines?

The clue lies in this wedding invitation (recently discovered, if I remember correctly*). It’s tricky trying to take photos of objects under glass, and we had a very sunny day. But the invitation reads:

“Mrs. and Mrs. George C. Lee request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter, Wednesday, October Twenty-seventh at Twelve o’clock, Unitarian Church, Brookline.”

Mr. and Mrs. Lee’s Daughter was Alice Hathaway Lee. The Timothy Bigelow Chapter of the DAR, whose chapter house this is, did some research and learned that she was a great-great-great-granddaughter of Judge Timothy Paine. This is an invitation to her wedding to Theodore Roosevelt in 1880. Sadly, she died on Valentine’s Day 1884, two days after giving birth to the formidable Alice Lee Roosevelt.

I thought the teddy bear display was a charming way to celebrate the holiday as well as the Roosevelt-Paine connection—just one example of the discoveries and intriguing network of history related to this lovely old house.

*You can find out more here about the intriguing bits of history that turn up in the Oaks.

Please click on images to enlarge.

Day II: Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, 2014

Isabella reporting,

While everyone hopes for a white Christmas (or at least a Camelot-version of a white Christmas, with snow appearing in the morning and disappearing by nightfall), this year in Colonial Williamsburg the temperatures did not cooperate. Christmas Eve was warm and rainy, a typical December day in Tidewater Virginia.

But while the rain didn't dampen holiday spirits, it did keep most visitors indoors, leaving these three 18th c. gentlemen, left, to carry on their conversation in peace in the middle of an empty Duke of Gloucester Street.

Here are two more decorated houses, both featuring apples. The doorway, right, also includes more local elements, including pinecones and the dried magnolia leaves. (As always, click on the images to enlarge them for detail.)

The wreath on the house, lower left, includes apples and red strawflowers, but there's another uniquely Virginian element as well. Those are the fossilized shells, Chesapecten jeffersonius, from the nearby James River. Chesapecten fossils were first noted by the 17th c. settlers at Jamestown, and officially given their scientific name in 1824 in honor of President Thomas Jefferson. Chesapecten fossils were also the first North American fossil to be depicted in a European scientific publication, Historiae Conchyliorum, published in 1687 by Martin Lister – all of which makes this a thoroughly historical Christmas decoration.

Holiday Break

Loretta & Isabella report,

As the year winds down, we're taking our annual holiday break from blogging, tweeting, and general social-networking to spend less time staring at our computer screens and more with family and friends.

Look for our photographs from Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg later next week, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled blogging on New Year's Day.

Meanwhile, we wish you all a wonderful, joyful holiday season!

Above: Central Park in Winter, by Currier & Ives, c. 1865.

Winter in London 1893

British Museum

Loretta reports:

Every year near the holidays, I either re-read A Christmas Carol or one of Dickens’s novels, because the London of my imagination is his, mainly, as is my sense of a 19th century Christmas.

But recently I came upon this interesting quotation from Henry James’s Essays in London and Elsewhere.  His love of London comes through in evocative images of the British Museum as he paints a picture of London in winter.

Henry James's London

British Museum image ca 1852 courtesy Wikipedia

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

Day III: Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, 2013

Isabella reporting,

Unlike many other holiday decorations in shopping malls, the traditionally-inspired decorations in Colonial Williamsburg are different every year. While the ingredients vary -- a holly wreath one December is replaced the next by strawflowers or oyster shells – the "themes" are often the same. The decorations on the historic trade shops usually reflect the trade inside, with locks of hair woven into the wreath on the wigmaker's shop, and miniature fashion-dolls on the one outside the shop occupied by the tailors and mantua-makers.

It's also interesting to see how the decorations on specific buildings change each year. Shown here is the Dr. Peter Hay house (which has a fascinating history of its own.) In 2010, the Christmas decor had a political tone – at least the politics of 1776 – complete with a "Don't Tread On Me" warning on the front door and a hanging effigy of George III.  In 2011, the decorations featured baskets, red and green apples, and a horse collar. This year the decorations have a decidedly sporting air, with horse shoes and deer antlers on the front door, left. The bay window, above, that once served as Dr. Hay's apothecary shop window is decorated with crossed wooden swords and stirrups holding apples.

Clearly I'm not the only one who's fascinated by this house's annual decorations, too. As you can see from the photographs, it almost always earns one of the decoration-contest blue ribbons.

Photographs by Susan Holloway Scott

Day II: Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, 2013

Isabella reporting:

The holiday decorations of Colonial Williamsburg have always been popular with visitors. There are special walking tours to view the wreathes, and the gift shops offer books and videos to help recreate the "Williamsburg look" back home. An annual contest judges the most creative displays, with separate divisions for professional decorators/artists and amateurs, and winners proudly display their blue ribbons pinned beside their doors.

Materials are restricted to things that would have been found in 18th c. Virginia, which eliminates electric lights, anything plastic or super-sparkly, Santa Claus and Christmas trees. As these examples show, however, there's still plenty of objects that meet the criteria.  Tucked among the greenery, pinecones, and dried wildflowers are 18th c. style playing cards, a fiddle, clay pipes, flags, gentlemen's cocked hats and straw hats for ladies, fifes, and drums. (The modern plastic tankards beside the door, right, were temporarily left by visitors who weren't permitted to bring beverages inside the shop.)

While the decorations are indeed lovely, they're not accurate for 18th c. America. No colonial housewife would dream of sticking perfectly good (and expensive!) apples, oranges, and pineapples on her front door for the birds and squirrels to eat. Traditional decorations would have been a bit of greenery, and little else.

But when Colonial Williamsburg was still finding its focus in the 1930s, residents in the historic area were encouraged to decorate their houses with della Robbia-inspired wreathes of fruit instead of modern gaudy colored lights and reindeer. Visitors enjoyed the wreathes so much that they became a new tradition; they are historically inspired, just not inspired by the 1700s.

Photographs by Susan Holloway Scott.

Holiday Break

View online here

Loretta & Isabella report:

So, maybe we seem a little lazy:  It's been only a few weeks since our Thanksgiving break, and here we are, wandering away for Christmas.  But Thanksgiving came late, and work on our books as well as holiday enjoyment with our families call us away a little early this year.

But we shall return to blogging promptly in 2014.  In the meantime, look for our annual gallery of pictures from Colonial Williamsburg, decorated for the holidays, to help while away the hours until the next bout of nerdiness.

We wish you the best of holiday seasons and a splendid New Year, replete, we hope, with historical delights of all kinds.


1913 Puck Christmas issue courtesy  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Dickens by Dickens

View online here

retta reports

Just about everybody is familiar with Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

 It’s hard not to be.  The novella has been made into plays, films, musicals, radio plays, operas, and television specials.  Scrooge has been a man, a woman, a duck, a Smurf, Mr. Magoo, Yosemite Sam, and Oscar the Grouch, among others.

But imagine Scrooge played by Dickens?  How about Bob Cratchit played by Dickens?  Or the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future?

Charles Dickens loved to perform, and one of the many ways he used his boundless energy was in giving public readings, and playing the different characters.  His first public reading was A Christmas Carol.

If I could time travel, I’d like to be in the audience of one of those readings.  The day after Thanksgiving, I came close.  At Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA,
on the same stage where Charles Dickens appeared in 1868, his great-great-grandson, Gerald Charles Dickens,* gave a one-man performance of A Christmas Carol. 

View online here

Our lives are about technology.  We’re used to super-duper special effects, enhancing and sometimes entirely usurping the place of humans in films and TV.  Here was one man on a stage performing a work written 170 years ago. Minimal props and little in the way of costume changes.  Yet I discerned no signs of restlessness or impatience.  No ring tones playing.  No audience chatter.  There was laughter and tears (yes, I wept over Tiny Tim), but above all there was rapt attention.  He had the audience captivated—much, I imagined, as his great-great grandfather must have done when buildings like the Mechanics Hall were brand new.

For Mr. Dickens’s angle on his performance, the venue, and the story of his great-great-grandfather’s 1868 appearance, please scroll down this entry of his blog.

This is part of a tour, and you might find a performance near you by looking at the 2013 Dickens Performance Schedule here.  He’ll be appearing at, among other places, Winterthur Museum and Colonial Williamsburg, two sites popular with the Two Nerdy History Girls.
*Not the only talented descendant. See here  and here.

English Plagiarists 1836

Loretta reports:

The early 19th century saw little regard for an author’s rights to his property.  Plagiarism was rampant.  In 1844, Dickens filed suit against the publishers  of a pirated edition of A Christmas Carol.  The judge found in his favor, but he ended up having to pay his own costs, amounting to £700.  This was an English publisher, and not the first to deprive him of the fruits of his labors.  Previously, on the other side of the pond, the Americans stole, too—and were deeply offended when he mentioned it during his American tour.

Piracy, however, worked both ways, as this excerpt from the American magazine, The Knickerbocker, indicates.

Read online here

 —The Knickerbocker, Vol.8, 1836

Illustration: The Moment of Imagination, 1785, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA