Frothy, Fashionable Caps, c. 1780

Isabella reporting,

When I visited the Margaret Hunter Shop in Colonial Williamsburg last month, the mantua-makers had just finished two complicated sewing projects, and their form of relaxing was to replicate several silk gauze caps of the late 1770s-early 1780s.

Caps had been part of an Englishwoman's day-time wardrobe for many generations before this. Ostensibly to cover the head and hair for modesty's sake, they were worn by nearly all women of every age and rank. For working women, linen caps kept hair tidy and out of the way, and offered extra protection around open fires. For the more fashionable, caps could also provided a base for the wide-brimmed hats worn out-of-doors.

By the last quarter of the 18th c., however, caps had evolved into notable fashion statements on their own. Trimmed with ribbons, bows, and ruffles and enhanced with fine stitching and embroidery, caps inflated into frothy confections to match the towering hairstyles ("heads") of the time.

These stylish caps were made of the finest silk gauze, a translucent fabric with a crisp hand much like modern organza. The narrow rolled hems, pleats, and tiny stitches were a test of skill for the mantua-makers, as Nicole Rudolph, above left, demonstrates. The original caps were so airy and insubstantial that few survive in collections today. (Our CW manuta-makers report that even after a single careful laundering, the caps

begin to wilt, and after two, they're pretty much done.)

But longevity wasn't the caps' point. They were a trend-driven fashion, with new variations appearing frequently in the London shops. They could be further personalized with different bows, as the back view of the example, lower left, demonstrates (though it could use some equally fashionable big hair beneath it for proper height.) Compared to a new gown, caps were also inexpensive, and an easy way to update an older wardrobe.

Looking at the satirical prints of the time, right, it's easy to assume that the size and foolishness of the caps was exaggerated (along with everything else) by the artists. They weren't. Apprentice Abby Cox models one of the caps copied by the shop from a print, lower right, and there's no denying its exuberant charm. Yes, the cap is extreme, and more than a little foolish to modern eyes, but to an 18th c. lady - and more importantly, to an 18th c. gentleman - there were few things more unabashedly flirtatious than a pretty young woman in a sweet ruffled cap.

Above left: Photo copyright 2015 Susan Holloway Scott.
Right: Detail, Deceitful Kisses, or The Pretty Plunderers, from an original by John Collet, printed by Carrington Bowles, 1781. Collection of the British Museum.
Lower right: Photographs copyright 2015 the Margaret Hunter Shop.

Breakfast Links: Week of March 30, 2015

Fresh for your weekend reading - our weekly round-up of fav links to other blogs, articles, images, and websites, collected for you via Twitter.
• Cards with cut-out faces advertised the 18th c. French coiffure.
• Last vestiges of early London, drawn and engraved c. 1800 by John Thomas Smith.
• Inside out: images from a fashion exhibition at Kent State University feature the inside view of clothing of the past.
• London before the Great Fire: John Thomas Smith's 18th c. images recored lost London.
• A charted guide to name-calling: Zelda Fitzgerald called Ernest Hemingway "a pansy with hair on his chest."
• Image: Suffragette banner at Museum of London lists names of hunger-striking prisoners.
• A papyrus of Homer was used as toilet paper.
• Women and restaurants in 19th c. America.
• Turbulent Londoners: writer, feminist, and early trade unionist Clementina Black.
• A trend in 19thc-early 20thc seed-selling: women-owned businesses.
• Eighteenth century knives and scissors sharpened.
• Seventeenth century recipe: "to make lemmon cakes."
• Image: Typology of 18th c. Wedgewood buckles.
• Planning an 18th c. garden with Martha Daniell Logan (1704-1779), South Carolina Gardener & Teacher.
• Sweden's traditional Easter witches.
• Carrie Marcus Neiman: a pioneer in ready-to-wear clothing.
• The creation of London's first great docks in the early 19th c.
• Napoleon and the Marquis de Lafayette.
• Photos of Bohemian partiers in New York's Greenwich Village, 1910-1920.
• The elopement of Lady Elizabeth Howard, 1793.
• Image: Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC from a 1934 postcard.
• How Grandpa got his LOLs: how people did April Fools pranks before the internet.
• The weird abandoned domes of Casa Grande, Arizona.
• Mourning jewelry: remembering the dearly departed.
• Image: Gold-heeled wedding boots, 1873.
• London's oldest hot cross buns for Good Friday.
• "Look'd like milk": breast-milk substitutes among captives in New England's 18th c. borderlands.
• The English diplomat who signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783 was known for singular dress and lack of stockings.
• Napoleon, or the "Corsican Monster" in early 19thc. British propaganda.
• F.Scott Fitzgerald's first draft of The Great Gatsby.
• Twelve buildings still in use today that were built during the time of Richard III.
• Anyone can write like Jane Austen...with the Jane Austen font!
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

Friday Video: Two Schoolboys' View of a Georgian Prince

Frederick, Prince of Wales

Loretta reports:

The early Georgians are not my specialty.  I’m more familiar with the Prince Regent (later, King George IV) than his predecessors.  But it’s interesting to learn how a family tradition of mutual father-son antipathy continues over generations.

In this short video clip, two schoolboys explain Prince Frederick and his family situation.  If you want to know more, you can view a lengthier and more detailed (and yes, very entertaining) account of the Georgian monarchs here.

Image: Attributed to Joseph Highmore, Frederick, eldest son of George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Anspach (circa 1740-50), from the Royal Collection via Wikipedia

Clicking on an image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

A Brilliant Starry Messenger, 1783

Isabella reporting,

The night sky is unfamiliar territory to most modern Westerners. A sky filled with stars and planets that was once so familiar for telling time and location is today lost in the brightness of electric lights. Rare celestial events like comets, meteors, and fireballs are relegated to a passing notice on the Weather Channel (or worse, in a song by Pitbull.)

But to our ancestors, the sight of an unexpected ball of fire shooting across the heavens was a strange and unsettling thing, a divine portent of a coming war or the downfall of a king. Starry Messengers: Signs and Science from the Skies is the name of a wonderful exhibition currently on display at Harvard University's Houghton Library, and features examples of how early modern scientists, artists, and writers tried to explain and understand the stars and skies above. The exhibition runs through May 2, and is free and open to the public; click here for more information, and also watch the excellent short video here.

I was particularly fascinated by the story that accompanied these two images on the exhibition caption:

"On the evening of August 18, 1783, a fireball streaked across the British night sky, breaking up in the atmosphere and vanishing over the course of a minute. The summer heat meant there were a number of observers outside at the right moment. Remarkably, a gathering on the terrace of Windsor Palace included both the physicist Tiberious Cavallo and the artist Thomas Sandby, each of whom recorded the event in his own way; Cavallo in the pages of the premier scientific journal of the time, and Sandby in a beautifully atmospheric painting of the event, turned into a hand-colored etching by his brother Paul."

The illustration, right, that accompanied Cavallo's scholarly account in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1784 no doubt explained the stages of the fireball's self-destruction to his learned readers. However, the Sandby painting, above, (click on the image to enlarge it) captures the magic of the event, showing a group of party-goers turned celestial observers gazing up into the sky from the terrace. Unlike some of the earlier illustrations in the exhibition that show people recoiling in fear from comets, these individuals are calmly regarding the fireball with true Age of Reason solemnity.

I like that Sandby included two well-dressed women in the group, and that they are watching solemnly, too, without any signs of female hysterics or fear. What did they make of the sight, I wonder? They certainly weren't going to report their reaction to the Royal Society; women were not admitted as Fellows to that august group until 1945. Did they rush to tell their friends and family and mantua-maker the next day? Did they write letters describing what they'd witnessed? Did they rely on the men around them for explanation(that one fellow pointing his hand was probably a know-it-all), or were they sufficiently educated themselves to understand what they were seeing?

Alas, no one knows. But don't be surprised if a heroine in one of my next books happens to be walking on the terrace of Windsor Palace on a warm August night....

Many thanks to John Overholt and Andrea Cawelti for their assistance with this post, and for my tour of Houghton Library; I am still in a blissful Nerdy History Girl daze.

Above: To Sir Joseph Bankes, President of the Royal Society, London, this plate, from motives of respect and esteem, is inscrib'd. London: P. Sandby, 1783.
Right: Royal Society (Great Britain), Philosophical transactions, 1784.
Both from the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Images via Houghton Library.

From the Archives: Fake Beards & Face-Paint: the Dreadnought Hoax, 1910

Isabella reporting,

With today being April Fools Day, it seems appropriate to mention one of the most outlandish pranks of the Edwardian era. (Remember this earlier hoax from 1809?) In our time of hyper-security and identity checks, it's impossible to imagine a group of artists and writers in cheesy costumes bluffing their way onto a royal  navy ship – but that's exactly what happened in what became known as the "Dreadnought Hoax."

On February 7, 1910, six members of the Bloomsbury Group planned an elaborate lark.  Dressed in improvised costumes and with fake beards pasted on their faces, they presented themselves as a party of Abyssinian princes with their Foreign Office guides to the crew of the HMS Dreadnought, flagship of the home fleet. The costumes were not particularly good - see the photograph above - and one fake beard even disguised a woman, the writer Virginia Woolf (far left in the photo).

Yet they succeeded in fooling not only the captain and crew of the Dreadnought, but an admiral as well. They were welcomed on board the ship with full honors, marines at attention, the band playing, and African flags flying. The ship's officers invited the visitors to dine with them, which the visitors politely declined, claiming the food and drink would be inappropriately prepared for their diets. In reality, they feared the glue holding their beards in place would not survive a meal.

The mastermind of the plot, infamous practical joker Horace de Vere Cole, described the hoax in a letter to a friend:

"It was glorious! Shriekingly funny – I nearly howled when introducing the four princes to the admiral and then to the captain, for I made their names up in the train, but I forgot which was which, and introduced them under various names, but it did not matter....

"I was so amused at being just myself in a tall hat [Cole played the part of one of the English guides] – I had no disguise whatever and talked in an ordinary friendly way to everyone – the others talked nonsense. We had all learned some Swahili: I said they were "jolly savages" but that I didn't understand much of what they said...It began to rain slightly on the ship and we only just got the princes under cover in time, another moment and their complexions would have been running – Are you amused? I am...Yesterday was a day worth living."

But while Cole was amused, many others were not. Within days the details of the hoax became widely known, with the newspapers devoting much page-space to the story as well as printing cartoons like the one, right, that are appalling to us now. The Edwardians may have been elegant, but they could also be audaciously arrogant, racist, and insensitive - imagine the international incident that this "hoax" would cause today!

Even in 1910, parliament demanded answers about the lack of security, while the navy was forced to endure the humiliation of being the butt of the entire affair. Even Cole was almost (almost) sorry about that, noting that the officers "were tremendously polite and nice – couldn't have been nicer: one almost regretted the outrage on their hospitality."

Above: Photograph of the participants in the Dreadnought Hoax, 1910. From collection of Horace de Vere Cole.
Below: "Once Bitten, Twice Shy", cartoon from the Daily Mirror, February, 1910.