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 Thanksgiving!

Loretta and Susan reporting,

Turkey time! Americans will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday, November 22. Since Thanksgiving also always seems to coincide with our deadlines and general manic bursts of writing, we'll be be keeping one hand on the keyboard and the other on the pumpkin pie.

We'll be taking a few days off from blogging, too, since we imagine you're all just as busy as we are. But please know that whatever the season, we're endlessly thankful for you, our readers all around the world. You're the best.

Have a wonderful - and delicious - holiday.

Above: Thanksgiving Greetings, holiday postcard, 1907, New York Public Library.

Armistice Day One Hundred Years Later

Welcome Home Our Gallant Boys

Loretta reports:

Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice ending World War I—known as the Great War and the War to End War, until only a couple of decades later, when another great war broke out.

World War I was a horrendous war, even by war’s horrendous standards, as Wilfred Owen’s poetry makes more than clear. His war isn’t heroic or romantic. It’s ghastly and heartbreaking. For a time, his work fell out of favor for this reason. But only for a time.

An English professor introduced me to "Anthem for Doomed Youth" fifty or so years after it was written, at a time when it struck a chord with those protesting the Vietnam War. Owen’s and others’ poetry led me, some years later, to Robert Graves’s Good-Bye to All That, which offered insights into both the war and that generation of Englishmen. Unlike Owen, Graves survived.

For me, these works and others began an education that continues. Visits to English and Scottish churches, stately homes, and memorials have given me a powerful sense of the toll this particular war took on the other side of the Atlantic.

Anthem for Doomed Youth 1917

We keep hoping, but so far, no war has ended war. All we seem to be able to do is mourn and remember. The Tower of London remembers, beautifully and movingly, again this year, as you will discover if you search “Beyond the Deepening Shadow,” for images from the centenary commemoration.

Wilfred Owen

Images: Welcome Home Our Gallant Boys, 1918 poster, courtesy courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA; "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and photograph of Wilfred Owen from Poems by Wilfred Owen, 1920.

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. And, just so you know, if you order a book through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.

The Vision of Skulls—a Little Rowlandson for Halloween

Rowlandson, The Vision of Skulls

Loretta reports:

Halloween seems an appropriate time for an excerpt from The English Dance of Death. In this volume, Thomas Rowlandson takes on a popular artistic subject, focusing on his countrymen, with William Combe writing a narrative based on the pictures (the method they used in the Tour of Doctor Syntax). In this excerpt from “The Vision of Skulls,” Sir Thomas describes a dream to his wife.

—The Phantom gave three heads a stroke
With his fierce Torch, and thus they spoke.
—Said one, "I was a soldier brave,
Who found in war an early grave;
But, e'er in Honour's field I died—
I slew the Hero by my side."
The Hero, by his side, exclaim'd,
—" 'Twas my right arm your prowess tam'd:
It was my sabre's well-aim'd blow,
 That laid your glittering figure low."
"Ho," cried a third, "pray cease your pother,
I saw you both kill one another."—
—Thus, though no arms, or legs had they,
 I thought they threaten'd an affray;
And seem'd, without alarm or dread,
To long to play the Loggerhead.
I thought their clamour ne'er would cease:
But the Torch wav'd, and all was peace.
It seem'd most strange the sight I saw,
That heads should speak 'gainst Nature's law,
Without a Tongue,—nor move a Jaw.
'I humbly told the Guide, that I Was of the class of Chivalry.
But that I was a Civic Knight,
Who had much rather eat than fight.
—Turn and look up, methought he said,
At the huge Sculls above your head,
Which are so thick, they might defy
The balls of any musketry.
Those which there meet your curious ken,
Belong'd to Knights and Aldermen,
Who to the Sword's heroic work
Preferr'd the feats of Knife and Fork;
And, as they grin, the Jaws between,
Their well-us'd, worn-out teeth are seen.—
But all these mortal remnants stood,
In such exact similitude,
I could not see, with all my care,
If any of my friends were there.
—I then enquir'd, if no offence,
And hop'd 'twas not impertinence,
If he might tell whose fleshless face
Was to fill up an empty space,
Which seem'd so large, that I could swear,
It was preserv'd for some Lord Mayor.
He wav'd his Torch, and lost in smoke,
'Twas thus I thought the Spectre spoke.—
—That place, Sir Simon, is your due:
And shortly will be filled by you.—

Intro to English Dance of Death

—The English Dance of Death, From the Designs of Thomas Rowlandson with Metrical Illustrations, by the Author of “Doctor Syntax.” Vol 1 (1815)

Images: The Vision of Skulls
Excerpt from introduction to The English Dance of Death

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.

From the archives: Remembering the Soldiers Who Didn't Die in Combat

Susan reporting,

I'm re-running this post, written last year, because the Museum of the American Revolution is repeating their excellent Memorial Day programs, and offering free admission to veterans, active, and retired military for the weekend. They are also once again providing carnations to place at the memorials in nearby Washington Square in Independence National Historical Park. More information here. 

Unlike many who live in the Philadelphia area, I haven't spent this weekend - the official kick-off to summer - "down the shore." Instead I returned to the still-new Museum of the American Revolution, one of my favorite places in the city. To my surprise, I had plenty of company. The museum was very crowded with families, a fine and heartening sight to a Nerdy History Person. There's never been a more urgent time in American history to learn about our country's founding, and how the responsibilities that were granted to citizens in 1776 are equally important for us today.

Part of the Museum's observation of the Memorial Day weekend was a quiet reminder that not all those who gave their lives for the Revolution did so in battle. Only a few blocks away from the Museum is the site of a mass grave where Continental soldiers were buried by the British then occupying the city. In 1777, John Adams described his visit to the site in a letter to his wife Abigail:

"I have spent an Hour, this Morning, in the Congregation of the dead. I took a Walk into the Potters Field, a burying Ground between the new stone Prison, and the Hospital, and I never in my whole Life was affected with so much Melancholly. The Graves of the soldiers, who have been buryed, in this Ground, from the Hospital and bettering House, during the Course of the last Summer, Fall, and Winter, dead of the small Pox, and Camp Diseases, are enough to make the Heart of stone to melt away. The Sexton told me, that upwards of two Thousand soldiers had been buried there, and by the Appearance of the Graves, and Trenches, it is most probably to me, he speaks within Bounds....Disease has Destroyed Ten Men for Us, where the Sword of the Enemy has killed one."

Adams was right. While the actual figures for the war are difficult to pin down today, it's estimated that approximately 8,000 Continental soldiers were killed in battle between 1775-1783, while another 17,000 died from diseases such as small pox, typhus, dysentery, and typhoid, often as British prisoners of war in the notoriously unhealthy prison ships.

Today the site of the potter's field lies beneath Washington Square, a tidy, tree-shaded park filled with babies in strollers and well-behaved dogs. In return for a small donation, the Museum offered visitors red and white carnations to take to the Square and place either at the small monument honoring the thousands of unknown soldiers and sailors buried there, or at the larger Tomb of he Unknown Soldier of the Revolution. I did; that's my carnation in the photo, above. I was surprised that there weren't any others, but it was early in the day, and I also suspect that other flowers might have been carried off by children unaware of the significance of their prizes.

No matter. As I stood before the marker, I thought of those long-ago men and boys and likely a few women, too, and of the families and sweethearts who never knew what became of them, beyond that they never returned home. Perhaps there was no "glory" to their deaths, whatever that may mean. Yet still they made the greatest sacrifice possible so that, 240 years later, this place could be a peaceful park filled with children. A single carnation doesn't begin to be enough thanks, does it?

John Adams letter to Abigail Adams, 13 April 1777, from the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Click here to see the entire original letter plus a transcript.
Above: Monument to the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier, Washington Square, Philadelphia. Photograph ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott.

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.

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.

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.

Thanksgiving Day's coming, and we're taking a break

Loretta & Susan report:

As we do every year, the Two Nerdy History Girls will take some time off to prepare for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, celebrated in the U.S. this year on the 23rd.

There will be food, way too much food, probably. There will be friends and family getting together. And there will certainly be thanks.

We’re thankful for many things, including our jobs, which we do believe are among the best in the world. We’re thankful for our readers, who support our work and continue to follow us on our nerdy history peregrinations.

Our voyages into the past will continue after the holiday.
We wish you an abundantly happy one.

Image: Greetings of Thanksgiving, postcard, New York Public Library Digital Collections image ID 1588398.

Remembering Lieutenant Davitt

1st Lt William F. Davitt

Loretta reports;

On Saturday we’ll be commemorating the 99th anniversary of the end of World War I. At 11 AM on 11 November 1918, an Armistice was in effect, ending the Great War with Germany.

Initially, the annual commemoration was called Armistice Day. Sadly, that armistice didn’t mark an end to all wars, and after WWII, the name, in the U.S., changed to Veterans Day, to recognize all war veterans. Elsewhere, the name of the holiday is different, but the theme of remembrance remains.

Our local newspaper called my attention to one of the last men to be killed in action in WWI—minutes before the 11AM ceasefire.  First Lt. William F. Davitt, the Chaplain of the 125th Infantry, was a graduate of Worcester’s Holy Cross College. An extraordinarily brave man, he earned a Distinguished Service Medal, a Croix de Guerre with palm, and a Silver Star Citation.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Worcester has squares, with memorial markers, dedicated to its veterans.* Lt. Davitt’s is one I pass nearly every day during my walk. I didn’t know his story, though, until I saw this newspaper article, and recognized the name—because, yes, I often pause at these memorial markers and re-read the inscriptions, as a kind of remembrance.

There’s more about him at this website of the VFW post named in his honor.

His foot locker is here.

And there’s a detailed picture of the last months of battle as well as his particular story at the 32nd “Red Arrow Veteran” Association site (please scroll down to “FINIS LA GUERRE!”). If you take the time to find and read it, you'll understand how he earned those medals.

*At one point you could find photographs of all the memorial squares at this website, but the links do not seem to be working. You can see two examples on the home page, though.

Photograph: 1st Lt. William F. Davitt, photo credit: State Library of Massachusetts
Photograph: Davitt Square memorial plaque is by me.

Sir James Tillie's Strange Interment

Sir James Tillie's mausoleum

Loretta reports:

Looking for a suitable historical topic for Halloween that didn’t involve burning nuts or bobbing for apples, I found myself considering the subject of earthly remains and what to do with them. In Sir James Tillie's case, it was definitely not the usual thing.

A drawing of his mausoleum, along with the same exact account of his ideas for his dealing with his corpse, appeared in various 19th C magazines over the years, like the 1828 Gentleman’s Pocket Magazine and the Ladies’ Pocket Magazine of 1837.

Other versions of the story appear in An Illustrated Itinerary of the County of Cornwall as well as this one from The Monthly Review 1803:

***

"Mr. Tilly, once the owner of Pentilly-House, was a celebrated atheist of the last age. He was a man of wit, and had by rote all the ribaldry and common-place jests against religion and scripture, which are well suited to display pertness and folly, and to unsettle a giddy mind; but are offensive to men of sense, whatever their opinions may be; and are neither intended nor adapted to investigate truth. The brilliancy of Mr. Tilly's wit, however, carried him a degree further than we often meet with in the annals of prophaneness. In general, the witty atheist is satisfied with entertaining his contemporaries; but Mr. Tilly wished to have his sprightliness known to posterity. With this view, in ridicule of the resurrection, he obliged his executors to place his dead body, in his usual garb, and in his elbow chair, upon the top of a hill, and to arrange on a table before him, bottles, glasses, pipes, and tobacco. In this situation he ordered himself to be immured in a tower of such dimensions as he prescribed, where he proposed, he said, patiently to wait the event. All this was done; and the tower, still enclosing its tenant, remains as a monument of his impiety and prophaneness. The country people shudder as they go near it.”

Lady's Magazine

You might also enjoy this version (please scroll down) by Sabine Baring-Gould in his 1906, Book of Cornwall.

And then there was the discovery of human remains on the site, as reported by the BBC a few years ago.

Photograph: Mausoleum of Sir James Tillie of Pentillie Castle by Rod Allday. Creative Commons license. You can get more information about the building here at Images of England.

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.

Remembering the Soldiers Who Didn't Die in Combat

Susan reporting,

Unlike many who live in the Philadelphia area, I haven't spent this weekend - the official kick-off to summer - "down the shore." Instead I returned to the still-new Museum of the American Revolution, one of my favorite places in the city. To my surprise, I had plenty of company. The museum was very crowded with families, a fine and heartening sight to a Nerdy History Person. There's never been a more urgent time in American history to learn about our country's founding, and how the responsibilities that were granted to citizens in 1776 are equally important for us today.

Part of the Museum's observation of the Memorial Day weekend was a quiet reminder that not all those who gave their lives for the Revolution did so in battle. Only a few blocks away from the Museum is the site of a mass grave where Continental soldiers were buried by the British then occupying the city. In 1777, John Adams described his visit to the site in a letter to his wife Abigail:

"I have spent an Hour, this Morning, in the Congregation of the dead. I took a Walk into the Potters Field, a burying Ground between the new stone Prison, and the Hospital, and I never in my whole Life was affected with so much Melancholly. The Graves of the soldiers, who have been buryed, in this Ground, from the Hospital and bettering House, during the Course of the last Summer, Fall, and Winter, dead of the small Pox, and Camp Diseases, are enough to make the Heart of stone to melt away. The Sexton told me, that upwards of two Thousand soldiers had been buried there, and by the Appearance of the Graves, and Trenches, it is most probably to me, he speaks within Bounds....Disease has Destroyed Ten Men for Us, where the Sword of the Enemy has killed one."

Adams was right. While the actual figures for the war are difficult to pin down today, it's estimated that approximately 8,000 Continental soldiers were killed in battle between 1775-1783, while another 17,000 died from diseases such as small pox, typhus, dysentery, and typhoid, often as British prisoners of war in the notoriously unhealthy prison ships.

Today the site of the potter's field lies beneath Washington Square, a tidy, tree-shaded park filled with babies in strollers and well-behaved dogs. In return for a small donation, the Museum offered visitors red and white carnations to take to the Square and place at the small monument honoring the thousands of unknown soldiers and sailors buried there. I did; that's my carnation in the photo above. I was surprised that there weren't any others, but it was early in the day, and I also suspect that other flowers were probably carried off by children unaware of the significance of their prizes.

No matter. As I stood before the marker, I thought of those long-ago men and boys and likely a few women, too, and of the families and sweethearts who never knew what became of them, beyond that they never returned home. Perhaps there was no "glory" to their deaths, whatever that may mean. Yet still they made the greatest sacrifice possible so that, 240 years later, this place could be a peaceful park filled with children. A single carnation doesn't begin to be enough thanks, does it?

John Adams letter to Abigail Adams, 13 April 1777, from the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Click here to see the entire original letter plus a transcript.
Above: Monument to the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier, Washington Square, Philadelphia. Photograph ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott.

Feasts and Feats of Drinking

Midnight Modern Conversation ca 1732

Loretta reports:

Though Easter Tuesday comes rather later this year, I’m working with Hone’s date, since it seems equally applicable to all feast-days. I think, too, this offers a good example of phrases that sound modern, but actually have been around for a long time. Unlike so many other expressions, “hair of the dog” is as familiar to us as it was to Hone’s readers in 1826.  The OED traces it to the 16th century.

As to the “feats of potation”—given the level of drinking in Hone's time, one can only imagine what his ancestors might have consumed, to impress him so deeply.

Easter Tuesday

Image:
Unknown artist after William Hogarth, A Midnight Modern Conversation ca. 1732courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Accession No. B1981.25.351

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.

Be My Valentine

Candy Sweethearts

Loretta reports:

Many centuries ago, when I was in elementary school, we exchanged Valentine’s Day cards in the classroom. We made them, too, but most of the exchanges involved cards that came in  packages of 25 or 100. We traded candy hearts, too.

The sending of cards, notes, and other tokens of friendship or affection goes back centuries. For today, I offer a few historical links.

The New and Complete Valentine Writer for the Year 1805 provides a variety of Valentine’s poetry, rather different sentiments from what we exchanged in school. (The image above left is typical of ours.)

And here and here you’ll find some history about commercial Valentine’s Day cards, much more elegant than those we traded. You can see larger samples of the Whitney cards here.

Images: To My Valentine, 1890, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 

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.

Holiday Gift Ideas for 1913

Gifts for 1913

Loretta reports:

Instead of a fashion plate for the 1910s (yes, we’ve come that far in the year’s survey), I’m presenting a few pages of the Ladies' Home Journal holiday gift ideas from their November 1913 issue.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind receiving some of these myself!

If you’re desperately missing the monthly fashion plate, here’s one from the December 1913 Delineator, with several more pages of fashion following.

Gifts for 1913

Gifts for 1913

Thanksgiving Break

As has become our custom, we'll be taking off a week or so from blogging, tweeting, pinning, and all-around social-networking to spend time with family, friends, and a good book or two. Both of us have early-January deadlines (the same day - what are the odds?), so there will probably also be a bit of holiday-writing in the mix.

We each have much to be thankful for - including you, the very best readers, followers, and fellow-nerdy-history-folks in the world.

Have a fantastic holiday,

Loretta & Isabella

Thanksgiving postcard by John Winsch, 1910, New York Public Library.

From the Archives: How Guy Fawkes Crossed the Atlantic & Became Pope Night, 1745

Isabella reporting:

Because our friends in Great Britain will celebrate Guy Fawkes Day on Saturday, it seems like an excellent time to revisit this post. 

Guy Fawkes Day is a holiday that may have a dark past, but it's certainly alive and well and full of bonfires and fireworks. Yet while it may seem a quintessentially British holiday, there's also a strong history of the celebration in New England as well as Old.

The Massachusetts colony was largely settled in the early 17th c. by English Puritans, and those conservative Protestant values continued to rule the colony. The bonfires and effigy-burning of the Fifth of November was one of the transplanted traditions that prospered, but by the middle of the 18th c., it had developed a few distinctly Yankee quirks. Several colonial wars against the French served to increase distrust and fear of Catholics. While the memory of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot weren't forgotten (the "Remember, Remember" song was duly sung), in all the northern colonies the celebration was now called Pope Night, and a rowdy time it was.

In Boston, crowds of  young men, sailors, and apprentices thronged the streets, dividing into two rival gangs, while costumed boys thumped on doors and begged money for drink. Each gang had their own procession and effigies of the Pope, friars, priests, and devils, and after a fierce brawl between the two gangs (ah, American contests of sports supremacy!), the winners captured the losers' effigies, and everything was finally burned in a satisfying bonfire. Special noisemakers, fashioned from conch shells and called "Pope's horns", added to the din, like 18th c. vuvuzelas.

As political tensions in Boston increased with England in the years before the Revolution, other effigies of unpopular public figures found their way into the procession, including the Catholic Pretender to the British throne James Stuart, Lord North, and Lord Bute. Later infamous Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold earned his place in the flames, too. A 1745 newspaper described the scene:

Tuesday last being the Anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, two Popes were made and carried thro' the Streets in the evening...attended by a vast number...armed with clubs, staves, and cutlashes, who were very abusive to the Inhabitants, insulting the Persons and breaking the windows, &c., of such as did not give them money to their satisfaction...the two Popes meeting in Cornhill, their followers were so infatuated as to fall upon each other with the utmost Rage and Fury. Several were sorely wounded and bruised, some left for dead, and rendered incapable of any business for a long time to the great Loss and Damage of their respective Masters.

For more about Pope Night in the American colonies, check out this excellent site commissioned by The Bostonian Society. Also see one of our favorite history blogs, Boston 1775, which has numerous posts on the subject.

Above: Detail from Extraordinary verses on Pope-night, or, A commemoration of the Fifth of November, giving a history of the attempt, made by the papishes, to blow up king and Parliament, printed in Boston, 1768. Collection, Library of Congress

Bartholomew Fair in the Early 1800s

Bartholomew Fair

Loretta reports:

Though Bartholomew Fair started out being celebrated on St. Bartholomew’s day, 24 August, calendar reform moved it to 3 September after 1752. It went on for another hundred years, until the Victorians banished it in the 1850s, maybe with just cause or maybe because ordinary people were having too much of a rollicking good time.

But as Ackermann’s Microcosm of London demonstrates, it was still going strong in 1808. I do love the description of it as “this British Saturnalia,” and yes, this is one of Rowlandson's livelier images for the book. He must have had a blast with it!

The annexed print is a spirited representation of this British Saturnalia. To be please in their own way, is the object of all.  Some hugging, some fighting, others dancing: while many are enjoying the felicity of being borne along with the full stream of one mob, others are encountering all the dangers and vicissitudes of forcing their passage through another; while one votary of pleasure is feasting his delighted eyes with the martial port of Rolla, and the splendid habiliments of the Virgins of the Sun, another disciple of Epicurus is gratifying his palate with all the luxury of fired sausages, to which he is attracted by the alluring invitation of “Walk into my parlour!” —Microcosm of London Vol 1.

(Since the Spitalfields Life blog always has superior images to what I can find in the public domain, I recommend you visit here, and enlarge.)


Along with the feasting and hugging and squeezing there were carnival rides as well as performers and other entertainments you can read about in Henry Morley’s Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair (first published in 1857).

One of the entertainers who intrigued me especially was the Fireproof Lady, but you may have your own favorites.

Fireproof Lady

Fireproof Lady

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.

Fourth of July Break

July the 4th 1902

Loretta & Isabella report:

Monday the 4th of July is Independence Day, the anniversary of the day we Yanks declared our independence from Great Britain, and then had a big fight about it.

Happily, those hostilities are long behind us. Nowadays, our relationship resembles the main image in the Puck illustration. In 1902 Uncle Sam embraced John Bull. More than a century later, we’re still not shooting at each other, but continue to embrace our separated-by-a-common-language friends across the pond.

We in the U.S. will celebrate the anniversary with fireworks. And barbecues. And a lot of flag waving.

The Two Nerdy History Girls will be taking a long weekend to spend time with our families. We’ll return on Tuesday with our regularly scheduled blogging.

To our readers in the U.S. we wish a happy Fourth, complete with glorious fireworks. To our friends elsewhere: If you haven’t anything official to celebrate over the next few days, make something up and have a party.

Image: Puck, July the 4th 1902, 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.