Strange Fashion: 1830s Hair Cap

Susan reporting:

While Loretta and I spent a lot (a LOT) of time in museums, there are still things that, even at our absolute nerdiest, can stop us cold.

Hair pieces, false hair, and wigs have been in and out of style all the way back to ancient times, but I'd never seen anything quite like this. The museum placard calls it a "hair cap," and dates it to 1830-40. (To me the style looked a bit earlier – though that could be because the cap is probably American-made, and not from a fashion capitol like Paris or London.) Instead of costly human hair, it's made of dark brown silk, elaborately knotted and looped and twisted to simulate curls, waves, and braids.

Such a cap was worn over a lady's real hair, and was designed to boost what Nature had failed to provide. Fashions of the times emphasised the hair that framed the face, with the back of the head hidden beneath a lace-trimmed linen cap, and often a hat on top of that. This hair cap could have given the impression of an elegantly waved hairline, complete with a tidy bunch of curls over the ears.

But according to the placard, there were other advantages to a hair cap, too: "When running water was not available in homes, it was difficult to keep hair clean and styled. One advertisement suggests that caps like this one were especially convenient while traveling, when sanitary conditions were even less certain."

Hair cap, silk, 1830-40, Winterthur Museum.

On the (coaching) road again

Loretta reports:

Since a large section of Last Night’s Scandal is a “road book,” you might want to follow the journey using the same guide Olivia does.  Paterson’s Roads lists the coaching roads, distances, and towns en route.

It marks the main coaching stops and the turnpike/toll gates as well as including descriptions of notable houses and sights along the way.  It’s fascinating (at least to Nerdy History Girls & Boys), but not easy to follow.

What with alternative routes and cross roads, etc., not to mention changes in Royal Mail routes, it wanted a lot of thumbing back and forth to plot out the route from London to Edinburgh at the time of my story.  Then I had to time the journey by coordinating with info from another book, because Paterson’s doesn’t list the mail coach arrival and departure times.  I used the Royal Mail schedule as a rough way of calculating how long it would take Olivia’s carriage to get from one place to the next, depending on how much of a hurry she was in.  I ended up making a spreadsheet to keep things straight.

(You will easily imagine my feelings when a copy editor questioned my timing, and thought my characters ought to be traveling at the pace of 50 years earlier (!!!!)—long before the roads were macadamized.  But I digress, as Authors often will when the subject of copy edits arises.)

Here’s St. Leonard’s, aka the Shoreditch Church, from which the distance from London was measured.  Getting out of London in those days was very much like getting out of any large city today.  The difference was, one hadn’t as far to go.  The urban sprawl hadn’t yet sprawled even as far as the Regent’s Canal.  At right is an early map of the tollgates around town.

The first Road Incident occurs at the Falcon Inn, in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/places/places-w/waltham-cross.htm (lots of interesting pictures at this site).

If you want to do more sightseeing with the characters, watch this space and Loretta Chase In Other Words in coming days.

Salad Days of 1699 with John Evelyn

Susan reporting:

When we think of dining in late 17th c. England (if, admittedly, we think of it at all), it's the roaring display of roasted beef and venison and pheasant, turtle soup and eel pie. The England of Charles II seems such a time of wine, women, and song, that it's hard to imagine a menu that included...salad.

John Evelyn (1620-1706) was a serious, scholarly gentleman, a public servant, writer, philosopher, and horticulturalist whose agile mind wandered from the study of architecture to gardens, from paintings to the pollution of London. He was a founding member of the Royal Society, and also a friend of Charles II. In a court full of carnivores, Evelyn was a confirmed vegetarian, believing that the key to health was to be found in the garden, not on the hunt. The fact that Evelyn lived to be eighty-six, while the king died shy of his fifty-fifth birthday, might be considered proof enough.

Evelyn was so devoted to his beliefs that he wrote an entire book on the subject: Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets.  Published in 1699, the book  suggested what kinds of plants and herbs to include in a salad garden, their cultivation, and recipes. To Evelyn, raw salads were more fit for masculine tastes, while he recommended that vegetables be "Boil'd, Bak'd, Pickl'd, or otherwise disguis'd, variously accommodated by skillful Cooks, to render them grateful to the more feminine Palat."

On the whole, though, his advice seems remarkably contemporary. Here's how he prepared greens:

Preparatory to the Dressing therefore, let your Herby Ingredients be exquisitely cull'd, and cleans'd of all worm-eaten, slimy, cander'd, dry, spotted, or any way vitiated Leaves. And then that they be rather discretely sprinkl'd, than over-much sob'd with Spring-Water, especially Lettuce....After washing, let them remain a while in the Cullender, to drain the superfluous moisture; And lastly, swing them together gently in a clean course Napkin; and so they will be in perfect condition to receive the Intinctus following.

The "Intinctus" is a dressing of "the Yolks of fresh and new-laid Eggs, boil'd moderately hard, to be mingl'd and mash'd with the Mustard, Olive Oyl, and Vinegar; and cut into quarters, and eat with the Herbs."  Sounds mighty tasty!

Like to try this and other recipes from John Evelyn? Acetaria is available as a thoroughly modern free ebook download here.  With all of John Evelyn's interests, it's very easy to imagine him sitting beneath the trees in his garden with an iPad in hand....

Above: An 18th century kitchen garden in Colonial Williamsburg
Below: John Evelyn, by Sir Godrey Kneller, 1687

A stop at Somerset House

Loretta reports:

There’s the lady with the drum again.  Yes, it’s Shameless Self-Promotion time.  My new book, Last Night’s Scandal, is out now! That means you can expect to see blogs here and at Loretta Chase In Other Words presenting the kind of Nerdy History Girl background that doesn’t get into the novels.  Plus pictures!

Today we’re taking a look at Somerset House, where Lisle gives a lecture to the Society of Antiquaries.  Since they most inconveniently had their normal meetings between “November until the end of Trinity Term,”* and my story starts in October, I took artistic liberties, and created a special meeting, with, I trust, a reasonable explanation.

The first view is from The Microcosm of London.  You can read the text about the building here. 
This view is a little early—the Microcosm was published between 1808 and 1810—but the exterior is still recognizable, as this photo illustrates.

Outside, on the Strand, an Olivia-generated Incident occurs.  The next illustration shows the general area of the Incident a few years after the time of the story—but it’s near enough for our purposes, and was the view I had in mind when I wrote the scene.

*Mary Cathcart Borer, An Illustrated Guide to London 1800.

The Regent of THE Regency (the silly video version of the life of George IV)

Susan reporting:

It's such a horribly hot weekend in most of America (ah, July) that it seems only fitting that we post another of our favorite Horrible Histories videos.

This one follows the career and reign of King George IV (1762-1830), a king who is more famous for being a regent than a ruler in his own right, serving as prince regent while his father George III suffered through bouts of madness. George IV was better known for his extravagant lifestyle, prodigious appetite, and many mistresses than for any genuine leadership, and even the beautiful palaces (like the Royal Pavilion at Brighton) that he commissioned were viewed at the time as only more examples of his spendthrift's excess.

Understandably George received little respect from his subjects. The Times famously noted at his death that "there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow?... If he ever had a friend, a devoted friend from any rank of life, we protest that the name of him or her never reached us."

In comparison to that, the Horrible Histories treatment of his life is downright respectful.


Right: George IV, King of Great Britain, by John Russell, 1790-92