Fashions for August 1833

Loretta reports:

Archery dress, like riding dress, appears only infrequently in the fashion magazines.  The last archery dress I showed was here.

A couple of years later, the color, once again, is green, but the style is a little different, and the later head wear, I think, rather dashing.

As to the evening and opera dresses—I would love to see the real thing.  The lace must have been magnificent.

Please click on illustrations to enlarge.

Read online here

 

 —Court Magazine (a later incarnation, I understand, of La Belle Assemblée), August 1833.

Shameless Self-Promotion: A New Cover for a New Book

Isabella reporting:

Sharp-eyed readers will have already noticed a new addition to the column to the right: yes, there's a NEW cover added to the mix, meaning that there's a new book making its way towards publication. Published by Ballantine/Random House, A WICKED PURSUIT is the first book in my new trilogy of Georgian historical romances featuring the three sons of the Duke of Breconridge – young gentlemen who briefly appeared in my last book, WHEN THE DUKE FOUND LOVE.

Now older and a good deal more experienced, the three noble brothers are about to do the unthinkable: settle down and marry.  Harry Fitzroy, Earl of Hargreave, is the first to meet his match and lose his heart...to Lady Augusta Wetherby, a lady who's not at all what Harry (or anyone else) expected.

A WICKED PURSUIT will be released in late February, 2014, in both paperback and ebook formats, and it's already available for pre-order at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And fear not, British readers: once again my books will be published at the same time in the UK, Australia, & New Zealand by Eternal Romance.

For more about this book in the coming months, click here for my Facebook page - and I'd be most grateful for a "like" as well while you're there.

Breakfast Links: Week of July 28, 2013

We're back after our short break with a big serving of breakfast links - our weekly roundup of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images.
• Laboring language: the ever-changing vocabulary of childbirth.
• The power of conscience in the exemplified in the genuine and extraordinary confession of Thomas Bedworth, 1815.
• How to sell a wife, 1787.
• Wonderful illustrations from Cruikshank's London Almanack, 1835.
• Spring houses, keeping things cool in 19th c. America.
• Carpenter, Clark, Chapman, Parker...a history of surnames and what they mean.
• Delicious! 18th c. recipes for lemon creams.
• Rich hangings in a humble house: wonderful photos from the 16th c. at the open-air Weald and Downland museum, West Sussex.
• Mrs. McCulloch's pictures.
• Now-questionable fashion tips from The Woman's Dress for Success Book, 1977.
• "Waterloo teeth": how 19th c. smiles might be filled with dead men's teeth.
• "Why does an S look like an F?": a beginner's guide to reading early modern texts.
• What on-line dating looked like in 1880.
• Beautiful block gingerbread.
• Intriguing fashion history "Who Wore It Better?" separated by 200 years.
• A map of vice in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1885.
• Separating the fact from the myth: Peter Francisco, epic super-hero of the American Revolution.
• Forgotten by history: royal babies you've never heard of.
• Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) and his scientific library at Chatsworth.
• A fashionable bath-house for sea bathing, 1893.
• From the proceedings of the Old Bailey, London: the trial of two smugglers who went by the collective name of 'Poison', 1747.
• Sin and scandal: the Langworthy case of 1887.
• Sea-wives, widow's walks, and the whaling life in 19th c. America.
• An 18th c. condom sold at Christie's, decorated with a "fraught sexual encounter."
• An exuberant 1880s bustle.
• Parch marks in the ground caused by heat wave reveal ghostly outlines of long-lost outbuildings surrounding 16th c. mansion. More examples here at Montacute House.
• If you're of a Certain Age (or have kids that age): the legend of the Oregon Trail, a pioneering educational video game.
• The complicated history of Rufford Abbey.
• A well-meaning NYC churchwoman in 1897 takes groups of boys to the country for fresh air - but forgets to tell their parents.
• The 10th c. sisters of Anglo-Saxon King Aethelstan.
• Business or charity? Why did African-American cook Malinda Russell publish a cookbook in 1866?
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for daily updates.

Friday Video: An 18th c. Gentleman Longboards Through Bath

Isabella reporting,

A surprisingly energetic video for a lazy Friday in August! Combine an 18th c. gentleman (well, at least that's what he's supposed to be) on a longboard, the beautiful streets of Bath, and a dash of Iron Maiden, and you get Georgian shredding, dude.

Thanks to fellow blogger Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century for posting this first on Twitter!

A Royal Baby is Born in 1840

Victoria, Princess Royal, 1842

Loretta reports:

While, unlike the Duchess of Cambridge, Queen Victoria didn’t have the media camped outside the hospital or dogging her every move, she did not exactly have privacy, either.  If you follow the link to the rest of the account (too long to post here), you may be surprised at how public the birth of her first child was.

~~~

The Court.

The town was taken somewhat by surprise on Saturday afternoon, by the announcement that the Queen had given birth to a Princess. For although the event was expected to occur shortly, the wise in such matters had set it down for some days later. The ringing of bells, however, which spread from spire to spire, strengthened the report as it ran from mouth to mouth; and in a little while a royal salute from the Tower-guns confirmed it. In the evening, the following official announcement was published in a London Gazette Extraordinary—
     
      "Buckingham Palace, 21st November 1840.—This afternoon, at ten minutes before two, the Queen was happily delivered of a Princess. His Royal Highness Prince Albert, her Royal Highness the Dutchess* of Kent, several Lords of her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and the Ladies of her Majesty's Bedchamber, being present.
      "This great and important news was immediately made known to the town, by the firing of the Tower guns; and the Privy Council being assembled as soon as possible thereupon, at the Council-Chamber, Whitehall, it was ordered, that a form of thanksgiving for the Queen's safe delivery of a Princess be prepared by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be used in all churches and chapels throughout England and Wales, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on Sunday the 29th of November, or the Sunday after the respective ministers shall receive the same.
      "Her Majesty and the young Princess are, God be praised, both doing well."
      The Court Circular contains the following official record of the circumstances and observances with which the event was ushered in—
     

1867

"Her Majesty was taken unwell at an early hour on Saturday morning, and the medical gentlemen were in consequence summoned to Buckingham Palace…”
      Read the full account here.
           
 *Spelling has not been corrected.
Illustrations courtesy Wikipedia:  above, Winterhalter, Portrait of Victoria, Princess Royal, 1842, below:, Winterhalter, The Princess Victoria, Princess Royal as Crown Princess of Prussia in 1867.