Breakfast Links: Week of January 10, 2011

Now that we've joined Twitter, we're discovering dozens of interesting blogs and sites, news stories and announcements, that delight us as Nerdy History Girls. We're sure you'd enjoy them as well – here's a selection of our favorites from the past week.

• Whoa! Thomas Jefferson reports a UFO to American Philosophical Society in 1800: http://bit.ly/g76ZtP

 • Creator of beehive hairdo honored & good thing, too: http://fb.me/PguRDNhl

 • Remember Hatch the #Tudor Terrier? http://bit.ly/emAqs8 Now she's fundraising for a new kennel: http://bit.ly/e3wp6C

 • From author Sara Linsey: more pix from LACMA “Fashioning Fashion”: http://twurl.nl/e2f21y

 • Snow to shovel, again. Here's a far more attractive version from 19th c painter George Innes: http://bit.ly/eIVMAp

 • Amazing dresses that once belonged to the Empresses of Russia. http://fb.me/xhQRfbwR

 • Join Lady Russell in her Winter Pleasures in Bath, Part One http://wp.me/pGJsu-1lW

 • Eating Like an Edwardian: http://tinyurl.com/24hwoyf

 • Great news from Chatsworth! http://www.chatsworthblog.org/2010/12/print-on-demand.html

 • Visit Bath instead of the snowy Northeast: Lady Russell's Winter Pleasure:The Ball-Room of the UpperRooms http://wp.me/pGJsu-1mk

 • Paintings of Opulent European Interiors by American Walter Gay 1856-1937 http://bit.ly/hEhc1j

 • Who wouldn't feel like a goddess in this 1925 Fortuny dress? http://bit.ly/hhV5dU #fashion

 • Hair from Marie Antoinette, G. Washington, Byron, Poe, & Keats: RT @MchlRbnsnBlogs Hair today| Locks of ages ... http://bit.ly/fnFJq1

 • Beautiful greens, beautiful room: Headfort House, Ireland restoration of Adam scheme http://bit.ly/dQlIIL

 • Just come across this great collection of c18th trade cards: http://www.waddesdon.org.uk/searchthecollection/trade_cards_index.html

 • How we nearly lost Charles Dickens Early: the Staplehurst Rail Crash of 1865 http://bit.ly/g5C23E

 • Writing novels offered Victorian women 'advancement'. Lessons from 1895 on how to write fiction book are still relevant. http://slate.me/f1gXTB

• Etiquette quiz: see how you'd do in Downton Abbey society in 1912: http://bit.ly/ePlBco

 • Beautiful way to start the day: A slideshow of an Elizabethan Manor house in Sussex - http://bit.ly/i7YoFf

Above: At Breakfast, by Laurits Andersen Ring, 1898

Update: The Mystery Sign from Colonial Williamsburg

Susan reporting:

During our series of posts showing the Christmas decorations of Colonial Williamsburg last month, a reader asked an interesting question about one of the trade signs. Wrote Darla Vincent: "Can you please tell me what type of establishment this is? I cannot tell from the sign what the building is." The sign that puzzled her appears left (and check here for more about that dangling royal effigy.)

Often the images painted on 18th c. signs indicate the trade practiced within, or what the owner sells, such as shoes on the shoemaker's sign, and a waistcoat on the tailor's. But while this looks like the picture of a hay-rick, it seems unlikely that hay would be sold from a house-front shop in the middle of town. Because the building is not open to the public, no information about it appears on the historic area maps.

Mystified, we went straight to the ever-obliging experts at Colonial Williamsburg. Their explanation:

This house belonged to Dr. Peter Hay. The sign represents his apothecary shop, but is associated more with his personal name (the haystack) than with his trade. That's likely because, according to his 1766 obituary in both the Virginia and Maryland Gazettes, he was an especially well-known physician (especially when it came to midwifery skills), so people didn't need to know what he did, just where to find him. Incidentally, his wife Grissell operated a boarding house out of their home after the doctor died, so the sign could have continued in business (so to speak) after that. 

Many thanks to Darla for her question, and to Colonial Williamsburg for the answer. Now click here for a picture quiz: can you match the Williamsburg sign with the appropriate trade?

Cleaning up Shakespeare

Loretta reports

The current controversy about Alan Gribben’s bowdlerization of the Mark Twain classic, Huckleberry Finn, lures NHGs to travel back in time to 1818 and visit the man who gave his name to the tidying up of great works of literature, Mr. Thomas Bowdler.

Here, in his own words, is Bowdler’s explanation:
~~~
That Shakspeare is the first of dramatic writers will be denied by few, and I doubt whether it will be denied by any who have really studied his works . . . It must, however, be acknowledged, by his warmest admirers, that some defects are to be found in the writings of our immortal bard. The language is not always faultless. Many words and expressions occur which are of so indecent a nature as to render it highly desirable that they should be erased. Of these the greater part were evidently introduced to gratify the bad taste of the age in which he lived, and the rest may perhaps be ascribed to his own unbridled fancy. But neither the vicious taste of the age, nor the most brilliant effusions of wit, can afford an excuse for profaneness or obscenity; and if these could be obliterated, the transcendant genius of the poet would undoubtedly shine with more unclouded lustre. To banish every thing of this nature from the writings of Shakspeare is the object of the present undertaking. My earnest wish is to render his plays unsullied by any scene, by any speech, or, if possible, by any word that can give pain to the most chaste, or offence to the most religious of his readers.  . . . I flatter myself that every reader of the Family Shakspeare will be pleased at perceiving that what is so manifestly improper, is not permitted to be seen in it . . .
~~~

The full Preface  makes very interesting reading.  I'll leave you
to decide how you feel about it.


Excerpt from  The family Shakspeare, in ten volumes: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family, Volume 1, Thomas Bowdler.

Illustrations:
First edition cover of Huckleberry Finn , courtesy Wikimedia Commons.



The W.P.A. Federal Theatre Negro Unit [presents] Macbeth by William Shakespeare , courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

The Crystal Palace in the Palm of Your Hand: 1851

Susan reporting:

The concept behind the GPS – where am I, anyway? – is nothing new. Guidebooks and maps have been available for centuries to aid travelers. Few maps, however, are as unique as this one: a Victorian lady's glove that promised to keep the wearer from becoming lost by placing directions literally in the palm of her hand.

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations that took place in Hyde Park, London, in the summer of 1851 was one of the first of the grand international exhibitions of the 19th c. Over six million people attended the Exhibition, streaming into London from every corner of the world. These gloves were created by George Shove as a fashionably discrete way for an out-of-towner to find her way about town. The map printed on the palm shows not only the famous Crystal Palace, the center of the Exhibition, but also other popular tourist destinations like Kensington Gardens, the British Museum, and St. Paul's Cathedral: an amusing, useful souvenir of London.

Those are the facts behind this handy map. But, being a writer with the usual writer's over-active imagination, I can't help but think of other, fictional purposes for such a glove. What about a pair for the hapless maidservant who, although fleet of foot while on errands for her mistress, could never quite recall directions to his destination? Or even more intriguing, why not for the young gentleman setting out on a night of entertainment, his gloves ready to guide him home again no matter how much he over-indulged?

Glove Map of London, George Shove, 1861, The National Archives of the United Kingdom

Etiquette in the world of Downton Abbey

Loretta reports:

As may be obvious by now, Downton Abbey has sent this NHG peering into the corners of the Edwardian era.  They sure had some complicated etiquette; the Regency era is positively freewheeling by comparison.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at Manners and Rules of Good Society.  If you want to make your head spin, turn to Chapter III, Leaving Cards.

“THE etiquette of card-leaving is a privilege which society places in the hands of ladies to govern and determine their acquaintanceships and intimacies, to regulate and decide whom they will, and whom they will not visit, whom they will admit into their friendship, and whom they will keep on the most distant footing, whose acquaintance they wish further to cultivate and whose to discontinue.”

If you want to time travel, this chapter is a wonderful door to the past.  On our early 21st century side of the door is Facebook and Twitter and texting.  On the early 20th century side are little pieces of cardboard printed in copperplate script.

Or try Chapter XLIII, Engaged.
~~~
It greatly depends upon the views held by parents as to the freedom of action accorded to a daughter during her engagement. Some entertain the strictest ideas on this head, and strenuously put them in force.

By ‘strict ideas’ is meant that an engaged couple, except in the presence of a chaperon, are never, under any circumstances, permitted to enjoy a tête-à-tête sit together, walk together, ride together, or meet during any part of the day.

Wisdom and common-sense dictate a middle course of action for the consideration of parents, neither granting too much nor withholding too much.
. . .
To dance with each other at a ball, or dance more than three or four times in succession, and when not dancing to sit out in tea-rooms and conservatories, renders an engaged couple conspicuous, and this is precisely what many mothers are most anxious that their daughters should avoid being, and would rather that they were overprudent than that they should run the gauntlet of general criticism.
~~~
I leave you to speculate why, exactly, a daughter’s being conspicuous was so abhorrent to a mother 100 years ago, and what form the general criticism would take. 

Manners and Rules of Good Society, or Solecisms to be Avoided, by A Member of the Aristocracy (1911 ed.)