Breakfast Links: Week of January 27, 2014

We can't predict whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow this weekend, but we can guarantee the freshness of our Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of favorite links to other blogs, web sites, articles, and images, gathered for you via Twitter.
• This beautiful shawl was a 17th birthday present in 1838.
• Book cover nightmares: a collection of bad Jane Eyre covers.
• The real Flashman? Incomparable Victorian adventurer Colonel Frederick Burnaby (1842-1885)
• A life in tattoos: William Jenkins, transported at age 19 in 1845.
• Everything you need to know about firing an arquebus in one simple GIF! (Professional soldier; do not attempt.)
• Image: Beautiful light at Hampton Court Palace.
• Russian menu from the Cafe Paris in Archangel in 1917, seven weeks before the October Revolution.
• Mapping the silence of housekeeping in 1925.
• When Edgar Allan Poe needed to get away, he went to the Bronx - but he had connections to Boston, too.
• Image: "A Soho night club serious disturbance," Illustrated Police News, 1897.
• How twelve million letters a week reached soldiers in the trenches during WWI.
• This expressive face from the 8th c. survives from an ancient city that was washed away by Lake Nasser.
• The key of Hell: an 18th c. book of black magic.
• Image: A carte-de-visite of three men standing around a chicken (and why not?)
• An 18th c. recipe for a Marmalade of Oranges.
• British propaganda at its finest declared that Napoleon was short; the truth was that he and Nelson were precisely the same size at 5'7".
• Pilgrim house, lovingly reassembled 350 years after construction, is for sale.
• The first Sherlock Holmes film was made in Union Square, NYC, and the second in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
• An Edwardian expedition to the pyramids, c. 1910.
• Who is Gladys E. Reed? Mystery of an extraordinary WWII Wren artist.
• Why did George Washington travel to Barbados?
• A visit to the abandoned 19th c. Bancroft Road Jewish Cemetery in London.
• The end of the Regency.
• A cat piano? Ten of the strangest musical instruments in history.
• Now online: over 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts at the British Library.
• Image: Socially v. eugenically "desirable" female traits, from Scheinfeld, You and Heredity, 1939.
• I've got my eye on you: 18th-19th c. eye miniatures.
• Jessie Tarbox Beals, the pioneering news photographer who lugged 50 lbs of camera gear while wearing a corset.
• A view that hasn't been seen in 500 years.
• The height of medieval fashion at the 15th c. Burgundian court.
• Let there be light! The lighting of the first gas street lamps in Pall Mall in 1807.
• Frost Fair: when an elephant walked on the frozen River Thames.
• The many lurid broadsides chronicling John Holloway's murder of his wife in 1831.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

Friday Video: London Then & Now, 1927 & 2013

Isabella reporting,

In 2013, filmmaker Simon Smith chronicled nearly a century of London scenes in a unique way. His description of this short film:

"During the 1920s, cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene travelled across the UK with his new colour film camera. His trip ended in London, with some of his most stunning images, and these were recently revived and restored by the British Film Institute, and shared across social media and video websites.

"Since February I have attempted to capture every one of his shots, standing in his footsteps, and using modern equivalents of his camera and lenses. This has been a personal study, that has revealed how little London has changed."

If you received this post as an email, you may be seeing a black box or empty space where the video should be. Please go to the blog at www.twonerdyhistorygirls.com to watch the video.

Return Engagement: And One Redouté went to Egypt

Loretta reports:

[This post, which appeared originally in January 2010, follows up on the previous repeat, and takes us time traveling to unchilly Egypt.]

While Pierre-Joseph Redouté was painting the flowers in Josephine Buonaparte’s garden at Chateau de Malmaison, his artist brother Henri-Joseph was in Egypt enduring plague, pestilence, and famine, literally.

Henri-Joseph Redouté was one of the company of “savants”--astronomers, mathematicians, naturalists, physicists, doctors, chemists, engineers, botanists, artists, a writer and a musicologist—who followed Napoleon to Egypt in 1798.  The median age of this group was 25.  Of the 151 civilians, 31 died in Egypt or shortly thereafter; all the survivors were scarred, physically and/or psychically.  Egypt in those days was not for sissies.

To Europeans, it was only marginally more familiar than the moon.  The knowledge they had as they set out was based on the Greek writer Herodotus and tales told by the few Europeans who’d visited.  Both sources offered an interesting mixture of a little fact & a lot of fiction.

Nina Burleigh’s Mirage:  Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt, offers a fascinating account, but here are the main icky details:

The savants’ troubles started when the boat containing all their instruments went down in a storm.  Things went downhill from there.

Famine:  Napoleon failed to provide food and water for his soldiers.  Desperate, the men guzzled murky water that turned out to be infested with leeches.  When all they found to eat was watermelon, they overdid it, and developed dysentery.

Pestilence:  Mosquitoes, fleas, tiny gnats, and vicious flies “swarmed into all cavities.”  Nearly every one on the expedition endured a painful eye infection called opthalmia, which left them temporarily blind.

Plague:  “During the French occupation, the bubonic plague epidemic in Egypt was a killer of biblical stature, a germ that caused men to die hideously, rotting from the inside out, sometimes within 48 hours.” 

This was in addition to bronchial infections and bites by snakes, scorpions, and rabid camels.

Meanwhile, on the water, the English Navy was sinking their ships and in the desert, irate Bedouins were shooting at the scientists surveying the ancient monuments.

It’s amazing, yes, that anybody survived.  Even more amazing was that they produced a 23 volume encyclopedia of Egypt, La Description de l’Egypte.  The online source is my favorite for studying the pictures, but there there are smaller (the original was huge) single-book versions, like the little Taschen Description of Egypt and a larger version, The Monuments of Ancient Egypt.

An Educational Game of Vice & Virtue, 1818

Isabella reporting,

Educational games for children are nothing new. Just like parents today, those in the past were always seeking ways to steer their obstreperous offspring down the proper paths of life, and what better way than to mask the lesson in a game?

This is the playing board for The NEW GAME of VIRTUE REWARDED and VICE PUNISHED, published in London in 1818. The goal of the game was to teach morality to children, with bad qualities like Sloth, Hypocrisy, and Impertinence alternating with desirable behavior, such as Patience, Hope, and Diligence. There appear to be more bad things to be avoided than good ones to emulate (true to life, I suppose), plus some vivid consequences of badness like the Stocks and the House of Correction. The ultimate goal in the center is Virtue – and unlike today, Luxury is considered a negative in 1818.

I'm guessing that the game was played like most classic board games, with players hopping from space to space with the roll of a dice or other counter. Still, thinking of how riotous children's board games can become, I wonder if games like this were as successful in teaching morality as the the makers intended. Certainly Contention, Confusion, and Envy have been a part of every game of Monopoly that I've ever played, with Truth and Patience in very short supply....

Above: The NEW GAME of VIRTUE REWARDED and VICE PUNISHED, published by William Darton, London, 1818. Winterthur Museum.

Return Engagement: Pierre-Jospeh Redouté and his flowers

Loretta reports:

[Things here in New England are viciously cold, making this a good time, I think, to revisit a warm posts  This one originally appeared in January 2010.]

Spring comes late to New England, and after days of snow, I’m ready for flowers.  The ones illustrated here are by Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840).  He was a court painter to Marie Antoinette as well as the Empress Josephine.  After the latter fell out of favor, he got friendly with the Bourbons.  It’s no small feat to survive those sorts of political upheavals.  One must be extremely charming or extremely talented.  It’s clear he was talented, and I’m guessing he was charming, too.  He’s one in a long line of amazing artists from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Jane Austen’s World  offers a wonderful appreciation of Redouté.  If you scroll down the post, you’ll see his family in an entry from the 1889 Dictionary of Painters and Engravers.  At some online sites you’ll find Pierre confused with his brother Henri-Joseph, one of the naturalists on Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt.  The tale of the scientists and artists who created the Description de l’Egypte is a different, far more harrowing story—but with beautiful pictures—which I’ll get to one of these days. 

For now, though, let’s just enjoy the flowers.