Friday Video: English Through History, or, Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Loretta reports:

In a college seminar on Chaucer, we were required to learn to read and speak Middle English. Until then, I hadn’t realized the sound of English is not only slightly different from one locality to another, but can sound like another language entirely, depending on what century you’re in.

I wish today’s video creators had stuck with English English speakers throughout, since the change of accents adds a layer of confusion, I think. We Yanks started out with a fairly modern English which we gradually transformed into our own variety. That could form a program in itself, as could the English of Australia and New Zealand and India and everywhere else the language invaded.

Some, too, would disagree about how recognizable Shakespeare’s English would be to modern ears, and not just in terms of our ability to recognize words. Still, the point is made about English’s evolution, and our nerdy history readers are welcome, as always, to comment.

Image: Chaucer as a pilgrim from Ellesmere Manuscript in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, via Wikipedia.

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.

Dressed for 1775: The Tailor's Intern, Colonial Williamsburg

Isabella reporting,

Whenever I'm visiting Colonial Williamsburg in the summer months, I always try to share photographs of the summer interns from the Margaret Hunter shop. Not only does the summer internship program provide valuable hands-on experience for college students who are studying historic clothing, construction, and fashion, but it also fills the shop with younger workers - workers whose ages more closely coincide with their counterparts in the 18thc.

It's easy to forget how young the Georgian labor force could be. Extended schooling was a luxury for the upper classes, child labor laws did not exist, and the entire concept of the teenager is a twentieth century invention. Most young people worked, often at an age when we'd still consider them children. Chimney sweeps, cabin boys, scullery maids, and workers in the mines, mills, and factories toiled long hours in hazardous condition for little pay. By comparison, an apprenticeship with a mantua-maker (dressmaker) or tailor offered the opportunity to learn a skilled trade, and the possibility of relative security and success.

Ike Cech, above, is one of the tailor's 2016 summer interns (I'll share the mantua-maker's interns soon.) A student at the University of Wisconsin Madison, Ike is studying textile and fashion design with a focus on historic design. This is Ike's second summer at Colonial Williamsburg; last year he was part of the team sewing the reproduction of General Washington's marquee, or tent (see more about the tent here.)

It was hot and humid today in Williamsburg, and Ike shows how an 18thc Virginian would have dressed for the summer weather while keeping an eye on London fashion. He's wearing loose, lightweight striped trousers, a checked linen shirt, and a black silk neckerchief. His striped jacket is a light wool and worn open (see the same jacket here worn buttoned for a very different look.) The final jaunty touch: a white felted wool hat, the summer version of the ubiquitous black hat worn by most 18thc Englishmen.      

Photograph ©2016 by Susan Holloway Scott.          

Politicians Take It Easy in 1835

Taking It Easy

 Loretta reports:

Figaro in London was one of several 19th-century publications featuring satire and caricature. Among the  famous names in this business were George Cruikshank (whose caricatures have often adorned our blog posts), William Hone, and Leigh Hunt.

Since we’re unfamiliar with the individuals and issues being mocked, with varying degrees of savagery, much of the satire can be impenetrable to us.

In this case, though, I think readers will have no problem relating to Figaro’s satire about legislators—fair or unfair—who seem to have mastered the art of, as Charles Dickens put it, How Not To Do It (please scroll down to Chapter X).

Lord Melbourne

Lord Russell

Images: Head shot of Lord Melbourne from Wikipedia (detail from copy of larger portrait by John Partridge at National Portrait Gallery).

Head shot of Lord Russell via Wikipedia (detail from larger portrait by Lowes Cato Dickinson at National Portrait Gallery).

If you look  up these gentlemen at the National Portrait Gallery, you’ll find numerous paintings and sketches, including somewhat younger versions of themselves, closer to the time of the Figaro piece.

Satiric image, "Taking It Easy ," from Figaro in London.

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.

From the Archives: Bugler's Cry: The Origin of Sounding Taps

Isabella reporting,

It's been a few years since we last shared this short video, but I can't think of a better time to post it again.  The bugle call known as Taps is over 150 years old, and from the first notes it's both instantly recognizable and hauntingly evocative – and especially appropriate for Memorial Day in America.

Breakfast Links: Week of May 23, 2016

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Arch enemies: a (sometimes uncomfortable) social history of the high heel.
• Unearthing the lost gardens of poet Emily Dickinson.
• Finally: Congress approves Arlington burials for female WWII pilots.
• The extraordinary life of Marianne North, the Victorian gentlewoman who traveled the world.
• Image: A mother and young son make flower garlands, c1911-14.
• For better or worse: origins of several popular good and bad luck charms.
• How England's first feline show countered Victorian snobbery about cats, 1871.
• Strange encounter: when Princess Caroline met Empress Marie Louise.
• Child actors were kidnapped to order in Shakespeare's day.
• In the days before plastic bags: parcels and boxes for textile purchases in the 19thc.
• The New York Times regrets the error, but readers don't.
• Image: Hannah Stilley, born in 1746 and photographed in 1840; one of the earliest born individuals captured on film.
• The Jacobite mystery of Cluny's cage.
• The rediscovery of Alexander Hamilton's working papers.
• Reproduction of garments for a young 18thc New England woman, from the 1738 probate inventory for Sarah Williams.
• Image: Young women at a domestic training school, 1938.
• Agnes Sorel, 15thc mistress of the French king.
• What it's like to be an historical advisor for A-list movies.
• Unearthing the secrets of New York's mass graves.
• Why are there so few knitting patterns in early recipe books?
• How horses helped cure diphtheria.
• Image: Sometimes the best pieces in a costume collection come with a story of love attached.
• The New England teachers who invented New Math in 1788.
• Rediscovered photo album shows ill-fated granddaughter of Queen Victoria in happier childhood days.
• The haunted doll of Hokkaido, whose hair won't stop growing.
• "Flower power" to aid 18th-19thc beauty.
• What a difference twenty years makes: two very different 19th trips from Boston to California.
• Image: Just for fun: Calvin & Hobbes explain writer's block.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.