Men (and Women) Behaving Badly: May Poles

Susan reports:

We're in the merry month of May Day and May poles. While most of us today think of May poles with school children clutching the ribbons, that sweetly pretty version is a Victorian invention. Earlier May poles were much less innocent, with pagan antecedents so distant that no one knows exactly when the first was, ahem, erected.

But there's no mistaking their symbolism: a phallic pole firmly planted in Mother Earth, part of the annual celebration of fertility, procreation, and returning spring. Most May Rites were in that spirit, too, with much drinking and bawdy carousing. Puritanical Christians were appalled, as this description from Anatomy of Abuses (1583) by conservative pamphleteer Philip Stubbs (c.1555-1610) attests:

"All the young men and maids, old men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, grove, hills, and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them...their May pole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus: they have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nose-gay of flowers placed on the tip of his horns, and these oxen draw home this May pole (this stinking idol, rather) which is covered allover with flowers and herbs, bound round with strings, from the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colours, with three hundred men, women, and children following with great devotion. And thus being reared up...they fall to dance about it, like as the heathen people did at the dedication of the Idols....I have heard it credibly reported (viva voce)...that of forty, three-score, or a hundred maids going to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled. These be the fruits with which these cursed pastimes bring forth."

Could there be any coincidence that May with its May pole and night-long "gadding" is soon followed by June, the traditional month of weddings? Nahhhh......

Above: The May-pole Dance, c. 1620. While there are many written descriptions of 17th c. May poles, both in their favor and against them, this demure illustration is the only contemporary one that I could find. Perhaps all the artists were too busy running into the woods?

NHG Library: Behind Closed Doors

Loretta reports:

I’ve been dying to talk about Behind Closed Doors because it’s a perfect Nerdy History Girl book, loaded with all kinds of fascinating details about life in bygone days.  In this case, the days belong to what author Amanda Vickery calls “The Long Eighteenth Century”— from about 1688-1832 (the Glorious Revolution to the Great Reform Act).  While this includes early to mid-nineteenth century, an era I’m more familiar with, she’s surprised me again and again, and offered the kinds of historical tidbits (aka fresh history gossip) Susan and I delight in.

One shocker was the attitude toward marriage.  We Regency writers learned early to refer to marriage as “parson’s mousetrap,” and to assume that a man happily sowed his wild oats until a clever girl came along and stole his heart.

But here’s what Vickery has to say:  “the intensity of men’s longing for marriage and domesticity is the overriding impression their diaries convey, a desire not just for sex and services, but also for a continuing of female companionship and a centred domestic life.  Domesticity for bachelors was fragmented and effortful, while their manhood remained in suspense…A common male fantasy was a home with a woman in it, generating interior warmth and sociability, the cradle of personal happiness and a platform for social success.  Far removed from twenty-first-century fears that settling down extinguishes virility, establishing a household was believed to give it full reign.  In marital domesticity, bachelors expected to puff out their chests, lift up their heads and hit their stride.”

Still, for every picture of domestic harmony (and she offers many examples) we can find the opposite, as Gillray famously illustrated.  In Jane Collier’s 1753 satire, The Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, she “advised husbands bent on torturing ‘a very careful prudent wife…who by her good economy confines all the expenses under her inspection fairly within her appointment’ to stint her funds: ‘part with your money to her, like so many drops of your blood’, lecturing her ‘on extravagance for every necessary that is bought into the house’, meanwhile ‘sparing no expense for your own hounds, horses or claret.’”

These are only two tidbits.  Susan and I will have more to say about this delicious book in weeks to come.  Meanwhile, here’s a proper review.

And here, in accord with some FTC rule or other (which probably doesn’t apply to us, since we're not reviewers, but never mind), you need to know that, unlike the majority of books referred to in this blog, which Susan and I buy with our own hard-earned cash, this one came gratis.

Caricatures:  Harmony Before Matrimony  and Matrimonial Harmonics, by Gillray, 1805.  Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Stitching Lady Dunmore's Gown: Finale

Susan reporting:

As promised! Here is the completed 1770s style ball gown for Charlotte Murray, Countess of Dunmore, made by the mantua makers of Colonial Williamsburg: Janea Whitacre, Doris Warren, and Sarah Woodyard, who is wearing the gown above. Many thanks to them for letting me watch their creation.

A few facts:

• Nearly nine yards of 54" wide silk was used for the gown. Eighteenth century silk would have been woven at about half that width, meaning that a comparable gown made in the 1770s would have used about seventeen yards of fabric. In London, this silk brocade would have cost about five shillings a yard.

• About eight yards of plain, pale yellow silk were used to line the gown; the pleated back of the gown was left unlined to give it a more airy feel.

• Approximately forty yards of lace was used to trim the gown, at an 18th c. cost of about two shillings a yard.

• Approximately eighteen yards of narrow gold braid was also used in the trimming. In the 18th c., this braid would have been made of metallic thread, at a cost of about five pounds sterling.

• With labor, the total cost of this gown in London in the 1770s would have been around twenty-five pounds sterling. This would have been a very costly gown, the equivalent to a designer couture dress today. To put this into perspective, the pink silk gown in the case behind Sarah would have cost about seven pounds sterling.

• Or, to make an even more sobering comparison: the narrow lace trim on this gown cost about two shillings a yard, while the wages for a common seamstress (who might well have been hired to stitch that edging into place) would have been one and a half-shillings for a twelve-hour workday, from seven a.m to seven p.m.

This particular ball gown has yet to have its "official" first wearing. Instead it was used this weekend as a prop in a performance of Lady Dunmore Prepares for the Ball (right), featuring visiting artist in residence Mamie Gummer.

Just for fun, I've attached a short video clip from my iPod, below, with Ms. Gummer as Lady Dunmore, arriving at the Governor's Palace in her carriage. Her footmen and driver are wearing the Dunmore livery, powder blue with silver lace; following her carriage are two gentlemen attendants on horseback, and behind them, two modern security officers on bicycles.

These days even a countess can't be too careful....*g*

Stitching Lady Dunmore's Gown: Part II

Susan reporting:

After more than 120 woman-hours of handwork by the mantuamakers of Colonial Williamsburg, the magnificent formal ball gown for Lady Dunmore is finally complete (see here for Part I.)

Left is a detail of the completed trim that edges each side of the front of the gown. Those long strips of ruffles were hemmed and edged with lace before they were pleated, while the zigzagging poufs were quilted and stuffed with sheepswool before they were sewn to the gown. The bows are not only hemmed and trimmed with both lace and gold braid, but stuffed with more lambswool to keep their shape. The fabric is silk brocade, in a pattern that matches an 18th c. description of "pale silk with slight stripes."

In the pictures below, apprentice Sarah Woodyard serves as the model for the final fitting of the completed gown.

Below left, Sarah's hair is dressed high in a 177os style and crowned with ostrich plumes and bows that match the ones on the gown. She is wearing stays over her linen shift, the standard underpinnings for every 18th c. lady. Tied against her right hip is her embroidered pocket.

Below right: Covered in plaid fabric, hoops are tied around her waist to support the gown. (Sarah is standing on a cloth laid on the floor to protect the silk gown from dust and dirt.)

Above left: Janea Whitacre and Doris Warren arrange the gown's petticoat over the hoops and tie it in place around Sarah's waist, adjusting the fullness of the pleats and gathers.

Below right: The matching jeweled stomacher is pinned directly onto the front of Sarah's stays with straight pins.

All that's left to add now is the gown itself – but I'm going to make you wait until Sunday night. Then I'll post pictures of the entire gown, with front, side, and back views, and I promise they'll be worth the wait!

Stitching Lady Dunmore's Gown: Part I

Susan reporting:

This week the mantuamakers in the Margaret Hunter shop in Colonial Williamsburg have been working at a feverish pace to finish one of their most ambitious and elaborate projects, a ball gown for the royal governor's wife. While the original Countess of Dunmore would have desired her gown in time for a ball given here in Williamsburg in her honor in May, 1775, there's another deadline this week in 2010 that's just as pressing: the new gown will be part of a special event at CW this weekend called Lady Dunmore Prepares for the Ball. Lady Dunmore will be portrayed by visiting guest artist in residence Mamie Gummer.

True to the taste of a peeress like Lady Dunmore, the gown is in the most fashionable formal style of the mid-1770s, featuring a flowing, pleated back and wide, spreading skirts to accommodate the widest hoops. Cut silk brocade in cream and pale yellow, the gown is being trimmed with delicate off-white lace and looped gold braid, and a wealth of poufs, gathers, ruffles, and bows.

For a similar style gown, check out this one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But while the cost of an 18th c. ball gown was based primarily on the value of the materials rather than on the labor, there were still hours and hours of cutting, pleating, and stitching, with every step done by hand. All employees in the shop would have concentrated on completing such an important commission, and so is the case with the three CW mantuamakers.

In the photo top left, Sarah Woodyard stitches the long channelled panels for the petticoats trimming. Each channel is stuffed with sheepswool, and will be gathered and tied into a lavish border.

In the middle photo, Janea Whitacre pins one of the ruffles in place on the gown's elbows; the loose gathers of the skirt will eventually be filled by the hoops.

In the bottom photo, Doris Warren stitches the more trim in place, with the gown's skirts spread before her. Each one of those long strips of trim has been hemmed, edged with gathered lace, and finally topstitched with the gold braid – and yes, everything is being done by hand. No one is sneaking off to the sewing machine, no matter how fast the clock is ticking.

And just as an 18th c. mistress of the trade might hire an extra common seamstress or two for the less important stitching, so, too, in this case there's at least one outsider

who has helped out. In the bottom picture, those hands stitching gold braid on the trim are...mine.

Check back over the next few days for more pictures of Lady Dunmore's gown.