Girls who wear glasses

Loretta reports:

"Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses."  Marilyn Monroe pointed this out in How to Marry a Millionaire, while contriving to look as sexy and glamorous as ever in her spectacles.

Here's advice on choosing the right eyeglasses in the 1950s.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a black rectangle where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on this link to the  Two Nerdy History Girls blog.

Courtier's Muff = Quarterback's Handwarmer?

Susan reporting:

If the American media is to be believed, just about every television in the country will be tuned to a certain football (football-football, not soccer) championship game on Sunday night. Yet even amidst all the hoopla, we keep our NHG antennae tuned for nifty historical facts to share.

Take this example, drawn from the seventeenth century. Europe in the 1600s was exceptionally cold, a time when the Thames often froze over so completely that month-long Frost Fairs could be held on its surface. Even kings and noblemen shivered in their vast but drafty palaces.

Fashion answered with the gentleman's muff, slug low over the hips with the same debonair nonchalance as a sword. When made from costly imported furs like beaver or sable, a gentleman's muff was also one more showy example of conspicuous consumption in an era that loved display. For this group of late 17th c. courtiers, above left, their muffs are rivaled only by their wigs.

While muffs for men fell from style (though not for ladies: see here and here), they seem to have come back in a big way on the modern football field. It doesn't matter whether a guy is making a statement in the corridors of Whitehall or Versailles, or on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field: he still has to keep his hands warm for peak performance.

As the weather has grown colder, both of this Sunday's star quarterbacks – Tom Brady of the Boston Patriots, right, and Eli Manning of the New York Giants, left – have been wearing certain open-ended, insulated accessories tied around their hips. True, today they're made from high-tech thermal sports fabrics, not fur, and they're self-consciously called hand-warmers – but don't you agree that they sure look like muffs?

What's at the makeup counter in the 1820s

Loretta reports:

Thanks to Frances Grimble’s splendid compilation, The Lady’s Stratagem, (which I’ve referred to/raved about here, here, here, and here), I’ve discovered several terrific resources dealing with historical dress and manners in the early 19th century.  One was The Duties of a Lady’s Maid (1825).

Among other things, the book offers a clue to how matters stood regarding makeup.  The contents make it clear that it was acceptable for women—and not just actresses and harlots—to wear make-up.

Though the author recommends making beauty aids at home—and offers many dire warnings regarding toxic ingredients—ladies could and did buy them from their favorite perfumer.

One could buy rouge in dishes, of which there were two kinds, Portugal-made (superior & costlier) and London-made.  One could also buy small cakes of rouge-tinged Spanish wool (I’m picturing felt, but welcome explanations from our experts)—the London-made being superior to the Spanish-made.

There were also color papers.  One variety was rouge-tinged paper, “chiefly for the convenience of carrying it in a pocket-book.” Another, from China, came in fragile 3” diameter “large, round, loose cakes.”  The wool that holds the rouge is described as being “like carded wool,” and apparently, the color flaked off easily.

China also provided color boxes, which “contain each two dozen of papers; and in each paper are three smaller ones, viz., a small black paper for the eyebrows; a paper of the same size, of a fine green colour; but which, when just arrived and fresh, makes a very fine red for the face; and lastly, a paper containing about half an ounce of white powder (prepared from real pearl), for giving an alabaster colour to some parts of the face and neck.”

Mouse fur eyebrows not included.

Illustrations courtesy Wikimedia
Top: Katsushika Hokusai, A bowl of lip rouge, a mirror in a case, and a packet of face powder.

Bottom:  Mignot Parfumeur, illustration from Journal Universel 16 décembre 1854—by Monsieur Gilbert Randon.

Mavisbank, a Tragically Neglected 18th c Country House

Susan reporting:

For many of us American history-nerds, the great British country houses seem to exist in an almost supernatural state of romantic perfection. They're the idealized places we imagine in Jane Austen's novels and see as backgrounds in films (among them: Brideshead Revisited, The Duchess, Pride and Prejudice, The Go-Between.) As an art history major in college, I sat in darkened classrooms and gazed in awe at slides of Palladio-inspired majesty, nestled in flawless green landscapes.

But reality is often not so kind. Taxes, war, changing societies, and shifting family fortunes all take their toll. Even houses made of stone become vulnerable over time (see Highclere Castle, playing the namesake of Downton Abbey.) Nowhere is this more tragically evident than at Mavisbank, a once-grand country house south of Edinburgh in Midlothian, Scotland.

Built in 1723-1727, Mavisbank, above, was one of those rare collaborations between the foremost architect of the day in William Adam and an artistic, appreciative client in Sir John Clerk. The magnificent house, grounds, and gardens (the painted view, right, features the canal that pointed towards the house) they created was the first Palladian-inspired villa built in the north, and instantly became known as one of Scotland's most important and beautiful country houses.

Yet by 1815, the house had already passed from the Clerk family, and in 1876 the once-elegant house became a lunatic asylum. For the next 70 years, insensitive renovations and additions further eroded the building's beauty. The famous gardens and surrounding fields went untended. Although the house was no longer used as a hospital, its last private owner was perhaps the most abusive of all, letting Mavisbank become a tattered haven for squatters and trailers, its front court used as an automobile junkyard, left.

A devastating fire in 1973 gutted the interiors and destroyed the roof. Threatened with demolition, emergency stabilization offered a temporary respite while preservationists fought to save what remained of the house. In 2008, Mavisbank was included on the World Monument Fund's list of the 100 most endangered historical sites in the world, increasing interest in preserving the site.

Mavisbank's salvation finally seems assured. Last month, the sale of the house was finally arranged by the Midlothian Council, which planned to transfer the house to its own preservation trust. What exactly will happen next, however, still remains undecided.  Should the shell be further stabilized, but left in its romantic, derelict state, or should the goal be a complete restoration, a recreation of what Mavisbank once was? This video slideshow of Mavisbank as it stands at present shows how monumental (and costly) either task will be.  What do you think Marisbank's future should be?

Top: Mavisbank House, Midlothia, Scotland, drawing by William Adam, from Vitruvius Scoticus (1812)
Below: Mavisbank House, Midlothian, Scottland. Photograph from National Monuments Record Scotland courtesy of RCAHMS.

What Frenchmen were wearing in 1827

Loretta reports:

As anyone fascinated by fashion history can tell you, finding men’s fashions in the first third of the 19th century isn’t easy.  Men’s magazines existed in abundance, but I haven’t yet come upon any that included fashion plates—not in England, at any rate.  The ones I’ve found online are from Costumes Parisiens, whose plates were often copied into women’s magazines.

Even though men’s styles didn’t change as often or as obviously as women’s did—especially after Beau Brummell established a look that splendidly displayed a man’s assets—they were by no means static; and Englishmen, like Englishwomen, were interested in what their fellows in Paris were wearing.
~~~
My cousin sent me two drawings of the present Parisian fashions which I have forwarded to you.  The most fashionable visiting dress consists of a suit of black, the waistcoat of velvet, and velvet collar to the coat.  An underwaistcoat of satin with black spots on it.  Cassimere trowsers, and black silk stockings.  The leading fashionables wear a gold chain for their eye-glass instead of a ribbon.  The walking-dress most common is a light blue frock coat and drab cassimere trowsers; and in wet, or very cold weather, camblet* cloaks are more commonly worn than great-coats.
—Gentleman’s Pocket Magazine, 1827

~~~
Alas, the magazine didn’t include the drawings.  But here is one 1827 fashion plate from a German magazine.

And here and here are some examples of men’s fashions from the Regency & Romantic eras.


*Camblet—18th and 19th century English and French, plain woven or twilled fabric, made with single or double warp of wool mixed with silk or goat's hair. It was woven in the gray and dyed in the piece; used for cloaks. Originally came from the Orient, where it was made of Angora hair.
—Louis Harmuth,  Dictionary of textiles, 1915

 1826 Costume Parisien fashion plate courtesy Wikipedia.