Return Engagement: Maillardet’s Wonderful Mechanical Exhibition

Loretta reports:

[Update: The movie Hugo, which I watched recently, reminded me of The Juvenile Artist described below.]

As usual, looking for something else, I happened upon the pages of Advertisements for June in an 1807 La Belle Assemblée.  I was particularly charmed by this ad for an exhibition of automata—and thrilled to find a video of one of Maillardet’s works* on YouTube.

The Musical Lady. Video of an 18th C automaton made for Marie Antoinette.
*The Juvenile Artist. The Maillardet automaton.
The British Fortune-Teller.  A modern magician automaton.
A Beautiful Bird.  18th C singing bird box.

For more automata, see my post on the singing bird pistols.


From La La Belle assemblée or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, Vol. II.  Publisher J. Bell, 1807

Publication Day for Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice", January, 1813

Isabella reporting,

As all good nerdy history folk likely already know, this week marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice. Countless words are being written around the world in praise of P&P and its author in celebration, and every laudatory syllable is well-deserved. There's not much I can add in the way of literary brilliance, but I can contribute a few words of my own regarding Jane Austen as a fellow author.

Long before she posthumously became one of the most famous of authors, Jane was just one more working novelist, A Lady whose name wasn't even on her title page. The details that survive about Jane and the publication of P&P, in three volumes, sound all too familiar to 21st c. writers.

Receiving her first printed author-copies (here are first editions) was at once a glorious experience and a taxing one. There were the inevitable errors, discovered too late to be corrected. She worried about the newspaper advertisement – ah, promo! – and whether the book would sell. (The sad truth was that she never earned enough from her books to support herself, something that many modern writers will also recognize.) She worried, too, that readers wouldn't understand her characters, especially her heroine Elizabeth. In the excerpt, below, from a letter she wrote to her sister Cassandra on January 29, 1813, Jane describes anonymously sharing the new book with an unsuspecting Miss Benn, relishing every appreciative word even as she dreads hearing a critical one.

Writers understand this. To Jane, Pride and Prejudice isn't a mere book, but her "own darling Child." Those who don't write believe that professional story-telling takes perseverance, talent, ideas, inspiration, and creativity. Those who do write know that a successful writer also needs a good measure of courage, enough to be able to send her or his "own darling Child" out into the cold, cruel world of critics and readers. It's a courage that Jane clearly must have had – and we're all grateful she did.

"I want to tell you that I have got my own darling Child from London; – on Wednesday I received one Copy, sent down by Falknor....The Advertisement is in our paper to day for the first time; – 18s–He shall ask £1-1- for my two next, & £1-8 for my stupidest of all....Miss Benn dined with us on the very day of the books coming & in the evening we set fairly at it, and read half the first vol. to her, prefacing that, having intelligence from Henry that such a work would soon appear, we had desired him to send it whenever it came out, and I believe it passed with her unsuspected. She was amused, poor soul! that she could not help, you know, with two such people to lead the way, but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know. There are a few Typical errors; and a "said he," or a "said she," would sometimes make the Dialogue more immediately clear – but I do not write for such dull Elves."

The Flu Then & Now

Loretta reports:

Trying to collect a prescription last week, I entered a pharmacy whose counter was heaped with bags of medication awaiting pick up, and whose pharmacists were all frantically busy.  The current raging flu season was the reason.

A Central Massachusetts columnist reminded me that, bad as it is, the current flu epidemic is small potatoes compared to the one that struck at the end of WWI.  The flu pandemic of 1918-20 affected ¼ of the U.S. population, yet the country’s death rate of 675,000 was lower than in many other places.  It was the worst pandemic since the Black Plague, to which it bore some resemblance: The symptoms of Spanish Flu (aka Purple Death) were gruesome, it killed very quickly, and it was undiscriminating, affecting young adults as much as—and in some cases more than—the elderly, ill, and small children. 

“No figures exist for many parts of the world, but the pandemic is estimated to have infected 50% of the world’s population, 25% suffered a clinical infection and the total mortality was 40–50 million: the often quoted figure of 20 million deaths is palpably too low (Crosby 1976).”
—C.W. Potter, A History of Influenza

The 19th century, though, was by no means flu-free.  Several epidemics occurred (IIRC, I killed some characters in the 1826 epidemic), including a pandemic in 1830-33 comparable to the 1918 plague, but with a somewhat lower death rate.

Here, as in so many other cases, physicians disagreed about whether or not it was contagious.  The Lancet of 1837 insisted it wasn’t. 

The preferred treatment, as you might expect, was bloodletting.

Illustration at top: St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty Oct. 1918 Influenza epidemic.  Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
Illustration at bottom from The London Medical and Physical Journal, Volume 10, 1803

When a Pleasure Garden Isn't Pleasant, 1777

Isabella reporting,

When thinking of the historical past, it's tempting to imagine the grander events as being, well, grand. The truth is that historical weather was every bit as unpredictable as its modern counterpart, and coronations, royal weddings, and balls were equally at the mercy of unwelcome rain and snow. This excerpt from the "Summer Amusements" in The Westminster Magazine, or The Pantheon of taste, June, 1777, describes a would-be glamorous event at Ranelagh, a fashionable pleasure-garden in 18th c. London. There's nothing worse than a big dance where no one feels like dancing, and not even the presence of dukes and duchesses could make up for drippy weather:

"The Grand Gala Concert on Tuesday...did not turn out so brilliant an assembly as was expected. The rain which fell on that day, and had fallen so heavily for some days preceding, not only damped the gardens, but damped the spirit of the Public; the consequence was, those who did attend seemed chagrined and disappointed at there being so few present. Till past eleven, the number of persons in the Rotunda did not amount to more than three hundred, and in the gardens these were only a few stragglers, who either just ventured to take the air and a peep at the illuminations of the bridge...or were necessitated for a moment to withdraw from the comfortable Rotunda. 

"About twelve, at which hour the company seemed most numerous, there might be six hundred in all, and to say the truth, a large part of the first fashion: the Duke of Cumberland, Duke and Duchess of Devonshire...and as many of the long list of noble Personages who generally frequent Ranelagh as were in town, being of the company. The Rotunda was most beautifully illuminated, and the orchestra filled with a fine, full band, who played various pieces of music...till past one in the morning. [But] Not a single dance was to be seen, unless the tedious perambulation of company round the room can be called dancing....Mr. Temple Luttrell, who planned the above entertainment, is said to have been a considerable loser by it, having only expended six hundred guineas for the use of the gardens and the expences of the concert.

The interior of the famous Ranelagh Rotunda is shown above. The crowd looks a little sparse here, too.  The print, left, shows the Rotunda from the outside, its domed roof making it resemble a modern sports arena, and the gardens and canal the perfect spot for a stroll on a clear evening.

Above: The Interior of the Rotunda, Ranelagh Gardens, by Canaletto, c. 1751. Private collection.
Right: The Rotunda at Ranelagh, by Thomas Bowles, 1754.

Breakfast Links: Week of January 21, 2013

The January weather may be frigid, but our Breakfast Links are always the perfect way to warm up  your weekend. You'll find our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, photos, and articles, all gathered from the Twitterverse.
• Days before Pride & Prejudice is published in 1813, Jane Austen writes to sister Cassandra.
• To be or not to be married, 1887.
• A striking red and black 1890s ensemble.
• How to get your beard into a gas mask, 1939.
• Manet's forgotten, red-haired muse (and fellow artist): Victorine Meurent.
• The lost wolves of New England.
• Why did European men start (and stop) wearing high heels?
• Rare & charming children's art from 1868, found in the blank spaces of a ledger.
• Couples from the 1500s, together in love, lust, & greed.
• British First Day Covers of new Jane Austen commemorative stamps.
• During a cold spell in NYC, 1888, it was possible to cross the ice-bound East River on foot.
• Lovely WWI photograph shows amusement and relief away from the fighting, October 1918.
• Gossamer gowns: what to wear to an inaugural ball.
• Ye very olde Sauce Madame for duck, from the 14th c.
• Quinine smuggling dolls, guns hidden in cookies, & other tales of Civil War blockade runners.
• Toby Chien, author Colette's beloved dog and muse.
• Forget those modern shoes with the red soles - how about these 18th c. beauties with flowered heels?
• Everything was fake but her wealth: the strange story of rich NYC recluse Ida Wood.
• Gallery of women's tattoos, to confirm & upset your assumptions about America's gendered past.
• The Secret Mansion: haunting photos of a grand house abandoned & lost in time.
• What prospects existed in post WWI UK for a spinster like Downton Abbey's Lady Edith?
• LOLcats of the Middle Ages.
• A snowy panoramic view of the Tudor entrance to Hampton Court Palace.
• Fantastic woodcut of a dozen men getting drunk, 1648.
• The daughter of THE Mrs. Astor marries the son of a Confederate and two immense fortunes are joined.
• Happy birthday to designer Christian Dior, born this week in 1905; his extraordinary "Venus" ballgown.
• Celebrate with Prince Albert's Plum Pudding (surprisingly not a euphemism.)
• "Pestilent stuff": the Dime Novel War of 1884.
• "My face is finely ornamented": surviving smallpox inoculation, 1777.
• Helen Taft was the first First Lady to donate her dress to the Smithsonian, and it's beautiful.
• "The Queen is slowly sinking": the death of Queen Victoria, 22 January, 1901.
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