Breakfast Links: Week of June 3, 2013

Served up fresh for your reading and web-surfing pleasure - our weekly roundup of fav links, featuring blog posts, articles, web sites, and photographs via Twitter.
• Emily Dickinson and the science of poetry.
• "Slave sugar" and the boycott of 1791.
• The curious case of the virgin birth, 1921.
• Previously unknown letter from Robert the Bruce to King Edward II, 1310, found at British Library.
• Ten things to learn from loving Anne of Green Gables.
• Kitty Marion: Edwardian England's most dangerous woman.
• The kind of begging-letter from a teenager that every parent will recognize - although this one's 200 years old.
• Fascinating site: every aspect of London life in sound.
• Mary Kingsley, 19th c. pioneer explorer of West Africa.
• "Let a Lady of a meek Disposition beware of a very great Nose": advice to the ladies on choosing an agreeable husband, 1738
• NYC's Casino Theater introduced the Floradora girls to America in 1899, beginning a century-long chorus line craze.
• Medieval man with a cat AND a cat-hat, reading in a manuscript.
• So what if it's June? Studio portraits of Victorians pretending to tobaggan.
• Peep shows and raree boxes at the Dennis Severs House in London.
• "O Love, Remember Me": poignant embroidered picture from wife to husband beginning journey, 1875.
• "We shall love each other forever": Harriet Beecher Stowe's surprising friendship with Lord Byron's wife.
• Fired puddings from Enlightenment Edinburgh.
• Lord Byron sells Newstead Abbey - with a few loose ends.
• Where's the cat? Hiding in these 17th c. paintings.
• The lovely lady athletes of Belle Epoque France.
• Tort de moy: a 17th c. dish fit for a king.
• Dueling with death: how Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr teamed up to defend a New Yorker accused of murder, 1800.
• The shantytown: nineteenth century Manhattan's "straggling suburbs."
• For $52 million, you can by Coco Chanel's house.
• "I heard a rattle in the kitchen and saw she was washing it in the blooming sink."
• Fanny Eaton: the forgotten Pre-Raphaelite stunner.
• Entertaining idea for a blog: fashion a hundred years ago.
• William Penn's truly loving letter to his wife before he leaves for the American colonies, 1682.
• Vintage photos of early versions of Alice in Wonderland.
• The first French winemakers learned everything they knew from the Etruscans.
• The water witch of Wyoming, and how dowsing works (or doesn't.)
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily!

Friday Video: The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second, 1953

Isabella reporting,

This week marked the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The elaborate ceremony was filmed in its entirety in color, a significant achievement at the time. This is the first part of that film (there are six more to cover the entire day), and the splendor of the historical pageantry of the day is both beautiful and moving.

If part one gets you hooked, here are the links to the rest of the series:
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven

Fashions for June 1817

Morning Dress

Loretta reports:

During my visit to the 1809 Hedge House in Plymouth, MA, we discussed ladies’ caps, one of which was on display.  This is one aspect of historical dress that many find not at all sexy or even attractive.  Yet, unlike the ups and downs of waistlines and swelling and deflating of sleeves, the lace cap seems to remain in fashion, decade after decade, in the 19th century.

Cap at 1809 Hedge House

Opera Dress

The morning dress shown at top is obviously less structured than evening clothes.  But interestingly enough, the “Marlborough cap”—meant, like the dress, for wearing at home—is elaborately decorated, and one of the prettiest examples of a lace cap I’ve encountered.

 
 












These fashion prints come from the Philadelphia Art Museum's copy of the  1817 Ackermann's Repository, courtesy the Internet Archive.

A Conversation Piece with Wallpaper, c. 1760

Isabella reporting,

Loretta's recent post on the elaborately patterned wallpaper in the 1809 Hedge House reminded me of the even more elaborate wallpaper of the 18th century. I've written here about the eye-popping replica wallpaper used in some of Colonial Williamsburg's houses.  But today I'm offering painted proof of just how busy all that pattern could become in the Conversation Piece, above, by Philip Hussey (1713-1783), c. 1760.

Conversation pieces were a distinct sub-genre of British painting popular in the Georgian era. I think of them as "action portraits", featuring several individuals interacting with one another in a room, landscape, or even on a barge on the Thames. Often conversation pieces feature several generations of a family, but they can include friends, servants, and favorite dogs and horses, too. Portraits can reveal much about the sitter's wealth and rank through dress, but the setting of a conversation piece can show far more, often including the sitter's country house in the background, or perhaps clues to a special pastime enjoyed by the sitter, like astronomy, music, art collecting, or hunting.

Sometimes, however, the setting seems to overwhelm the sitters. There's little doubt that the parents in the painting above are proud of their young children, but clearly they wanted their elegantly appointed parlor highlighted, too. I can't find these sitters' identity (if anyone else recognizes them, please let me know! Update: Possibly members of the Corbally family from Rathbeale Co Dublin, Ireland - see the comment below.), but I'm guessing they were prosperous members of the rising middle class. This painting is full of pride of ownership. In addition to their fashionable clothing, rich with silk and lace, the sitters have a full set of stylish mahogany chairs, upholstered in black leather; a room-size patterned carpet (very grand in an era where most floors were still bare); a pair of painted or needlework fire screens; and gilded candlesticks by the fireplace.

But what most viewers notice first is the wallpaper. Wallpaper inspired by classical architecture was the height of fashion in the mid-18th c. Not only did it show the owners' taste and appreciation for the architecture of both classical ruins and the grand country houses of the nobility, but it also gave a sense of grandeur and detail to a room lacking its own architectural distinction. The wallpaper was also in itself a display of wealth. Wallpaper was costly, and printed with hand-carved wood blocks. The cost rose with the complexity of the design and colors, and the size of the repeat of the pattern likely made the wallpaper in this room very expensive indeed – which is why it's not covered with any paintings or mirrors.  It's supposed to wow on its own, and it does.

Above: Conversation Piece, possibly of members of the Corbally Family, by Philip Hussey, c. 1760. National Gallery of Ireland.

A Birthday Party for King George III

Allan Ramsay, King George III

Loretta reports:

One of my go-to sources is Hone's Every-Day Book, a feast of historical information.  Published in two volumes, it offers an entry for each day of the year.  Some are long, some are short.  This is one of the sweeter and shorter ones.

~~~

June 4.

REMARKABLE CELEBRATION

This was king George the Third's birthday, and therefore during his reign was kept at court, and in many towns throughout the kingdom.

At Bexhill, on the coast of Sussex, where the inhabitants, who scarcely exceed 800, are remarkable for longevity and loyalty, on the 4th of June, 1819, they celebrated the king’s birth-day in an appropriate and remarkable manner.  Twenty-five old men, inhabitants of the parish, whose united ages amounted to 2025, averaging eighty-one each (the age of the king) dined together at the Bell inn, and passed the day in a cheerful and happy manner.  The dinner was set on table by fifteen other old men, also of the above parish, whose united ages amounted to seventy-one each, and six others, whose ages amounted to sixty-one each, rang the bells on the occasion.  the old men dined at one o’clock, and at half-past two a public dinner was served up to the greater part of the respectable inhabitants to the number of eight-one, who were also the subscribers to the old men’s dinner.  The assembly room was decorated with several appropriate devices; and some of the old men, with the greater part of the company, enjoyed themselves to a late hour.