Breakfast Links: Week of December 30, 2013

Happy new year! We're back with a bountiful collection of Breakfast Links for you - links to all our recent fav web sites, blogs, articles, and images, gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• Early circulating libraries and Jane Austen.
• Saving face: beauty for women workers during the First World War.
• Is the famous 19th c. painting Washington Crossing the Delaware obscene? Some schools have thought so.
• Rare 18th c. "Incroyable" male fashion doll displayed new styles to gentlemen.
• How humans made squirrels part of the urban environment.
• Another point of view: squirrels as symbols of Satan, of spite, and of saving.
• Michelangelo's handwritten (and illustrated) 16th c. grocery list.
• "You are certainly a very bad woman": the case of Mary Moriarty, a regular of the 1830s magistrates' courts.
• Before drivers' licenses and SSNs, some 19th c. civilians used the equivalent of commercial dog tags for ID.
• Image: Women in the dissection room, Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1892.
• New Years gifts to the "deserving poor" from Queen Victoria, 1853.
• Animal crackers: the long English tradition of keeping exotic animals.
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, as translated into Latin and set in plainsong: amazingly beautiful, too.
• Victorian adventures and terrible tales, all part of the Illustrated Police News.
• Paws, pee, & mice: cats among medieval manuscripts.
• Making up Hollywood: makeup maven Max Factor, who created the "cupid's bow" lips and made Rudolph Valentino a heartthrob.
• Image: Two stones thrown by Suffragists at Buckingham Palace 100 years ago.
• Here come the brides! Behind-the-scenes blog leading up spring installation at the Victoria & Albert Museum of wedding gowns from 1775-2014.
• The most boring thing on your plate is about to get amazing: parsley, the herb of death.
• Christmas in prison in 1839.
• In the background: art you may never notice in museum dioramas.
• Jewish boxes as "enforcers" during the Covent Garden Old Price War of 1809.
• Electric corsets, the very thing for ladies c. 1890.
• Image: Sentimental or grotesque? Charles Dickens' letter opener, made from the taxidermied paw of his beloved pet cat, Bob.
• To make Lemon Cheesecakes: 18th c. recipe plus modern version.
• Weeping sailors: British manliness, 1760-1860.
• The snooty Astor Place Opera House in New York City is ruined when a rival secretly rents the house for a dog and monkey show in 1852.
• Be merry and drink perry, a popular 17th c. pear wine - even in Puritan Massachusetts.
• Human trophies: the skull is a familiar memento mori, but during the Second World War, it also became a controversial souvenir.
• New Years' gifts for Queen Elizabeth I, 1599-1600.
• Domestic cats enjoyed village life in China 5,300 years ago.
• Models on 1920s postcards labelled with the names of the real-life lovers who sent cards.
• Pitchcocked eels: English tavern dining in the 18th c.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

Friday Video: What the Janitor Saw, 1902

Isabella reporting,

Here's a silly, short film clip that must have been quite racy when it was new. Called Par le trou de serrure (What Happened to the Inquisitive Janitor), it's exactly that – a nosy hotel employee spying on guests.

It's the work of director Ferdinand Zecca (1864-1947) for the Société Pathé Frères of Paris, the largest film equipment and production in the world in the early twentieth century. In 1902, Pathé had recently acquired the patents of the Lumiere brothers - we've shared examples of their pioneering films here and here - and were swiftly expanding into the international market by showing their short silent films in their own movie theaters around the world, from Paris to London to New York to Moscow. Regardless of the language of the patrons, short films like this one must have been immensely popular.

This particular film is also considered noteworthy for its first known use of the "keyhole matte" technique. The audience gets to see exactly what the peeping-tom janitor sees - even the keyhole through which he's spying.

Dangers of 1836 Diving Apparatus

View online here

Loretta reports: 

A while back I wrote about an early submarine and the perils of underwater travel devices in the 19^th century.  Given the state of technology in the early 1800s, one might expect trouble—but not the kind described in this entry in the Annual Register's Chronicle for 1836.*

~~~

JANUARY

2.  Escape From Suffocation.— A tradesman in Blackman-street, named Caston, carrying on the occupation of a "general dealer," had a narrow escape from suffocation a few days ago, under singular circumstances. Amongst some articles he had purchased at a sale was a diving apparatus, to enable the wearer to remain under water for a considerable time. Never having before seen a machine of a similar construction, Mr. Caston determined to try it in the first instance on terra firma, and for this purpose drew the helmet or cap over his head, and then adjusted that part which fitted the lower extremities. He, however, omitted the most essential part of the apparatus — namely, the valve which admitted the air into that portion which fitted over his head and face. This neglect nearly cost him his life; for when one of his servants entered the warehouse, Mr. Caston was discovered rolling about on the floor, enveloped in the diving apparatus, apparently in great agony. The servant entered just in time to extricate his master.

~~~

View online here

 These illustrations are later, although, apparently the basic setup didn't change very much until the 20th century.  You can see more images of early diving dress here.

*Google Books thinks it's 1837, but they've been confused before.

Day III: Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, 2013

Isabella reporting,

Unlike many other holiday decorations in shopping malls, the traditionally-inspired decorations in Colonial Williamsburg are different every year. While the ingredients vary -- a holly wreath one December is replaced the next by strawflowers or oyster shells – the "themes" are often the same. The decorations on the historic trade shops usually reflect the trade inside, with locks of hair woven into the wreath on the wigmaker's shop, and miniature fashion-dolls on the one outside the shop occupied by the tailors and mantua-makers.

It's also interesting to see how the decorations on specific buildings change each year. Shown here is the Dr. Peter Hay house (which has a fascinating history of its own.) In 2010, the Christmas decor had a political tone – at least the politics of 1776 – complete with a "Don't Tread On Me" warning on the front door and a hanging effigy of George III.  In 2011, the decorations featured baskets, red and green apples, and a horse collar. This year the decorations have a decidedly sporting air, with horse shoes and deer antlers on the front door, left. The bay window, above, that once served as Dr. Hay's apothecary shop window is decorated with crossed wooden swords and stirrups holding apples.

Clearly I'm not the only one who's fascinated by this house's annual decorations, too. As you can see from the photographs, it almost always earns one of the decoration-contest blue ribbons.

Photographs by Susan Holloway Scott

Day II: Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, 2013

Isabella reporting:

The holiday decorations of Colonial Williamsburg have always been popular with visitors. There are special walking tours to view the wreathes, and the gift shops offer books and videos to help recreate the "Williamsburg look" back home. An annual contest judges the most creative displays, with separate divisions for professional decorators/artists and amateurs, and winners proudly display their blue ribbons pinned beside their doors.

Materials are restricted to things that would have been found in 18th c. Virginia, which eliminates electric lights, anything plastic or super-sparkly, Santa Claus and Christmas trees. As these examples show, however, there's still plenty of objects that meet the criteria.  Tucked among the greenery, pinecones, and dried wildflowers are 18th c. style playing cards, a fiddle, clay pipes, flags, gentlemen's cocked hats and straw hats for ladies, fifes, and drums. (The modern plastic tankards beside the door, right, were temporarily left by visitors who weren't permitted to bring beverages inside the shop.)

While the decorations are indeed lovely, they're not accurate for 18th c. America. No colonial housewife would dream of sticking perfectly good (and expensive!) apples, oranges, and pineapples on her front door for the birds and squirrels to eat. Traditional decorations would have been a bit of greenery, and little else.

But when Colonial Williamsburg was still finding its focus in the 1930s, residents in the historic area were encouraged to decorate their houses with della Robbia-inspired wreathes of fruit instead of modern gaudy colored lights and reindeer. Visitors enjoyed the wreathes so much that they became a new tradition; they are historically inspired, just not inspired by the 1700s.

Photographs by Susan Holloway Scott.