How British Was Queen Victoria? (Silly historical video time again)

Another delightfully silly video from our favorite Horrible Histories, with their usual little edge to the humor. The point of this video – that often the things considered most thoroughly British were in fact imported from somewhere else – is one more commonly made against us Americans.

In our enthusiasm to display our Yankee-Doodle-Dandy patriotic fervor, we (particularly politicians) too often slap the "All American" tag on things that really aren't. Denim jeans are one of the examples that comes immediately to mind. We've all heard the tale of how, in 1853, enterprising Levi Strauss created sturdy work pants for the miners of the California Gold Rush, and an entire denim world was born. What could be more thoroughly American than jeans?  (Of course this glosses over the fact that Strauss was a German immigrant, and that his fabric of choice was serge de Nimes, a heavy twill imported from France.)

Now a recently rediscovered series of 17th century paintings by a forgotten Italian artist have tossed that assumption out the window. Based on the evidence of these pictures by the newly-dubbed "Master of the Blue Jeans", it seems that denim clothing has been around for a lot longer than the United States.

Queen Victoria would understand.

Hope you enjoy!

Praising Ale with John Taylor the Water-Poet, 1637

Susan reporting:

With the weekend before us, we thought we'd start Happy Hour a bit early with English poet John Taylor (1578-1653), shown glowering, left, in a contemporary engraving.

Odds are that unless you were an English Lit major, you've never heard of Taylor – or, as he called himself, John Taylor the Water-Poet. Taylor wasn't some sighing, sonnet-penning courtier, but a member of the boatmen's guild, a rough-hewn, working waterman on the Thames who ferried passengers along the river for much of his adult life. (Think of a modern cab-driver writing poetry.) More than 150 publications are credited to Taylor, ranging from poems to singular travelogues to satirical, opinionated brochures. He's also the author of one of the earliest English palindromes: "Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel."

This excerpt is from his Historie of the most part of drinks, in use now in the kingdomes of Great Brittaine and Ireland, which Taylor published in 1637. It was a subject dear to the waterman, and his Historie is clearly based on much personal, ah, research. While some of these drinks are long forgotten (a glass of pomperkin, anyone?), Taylor favored ale, and when he lists all its admirable qualities, who can blame him?

"First then, ALE is a singular remedy against all melancholick diseases, Tremor cordis, and Malacies of the spleene. It is purgative and of great operation against all gripings of the small guts. It cures the stone in the Bladder or Kidneys, and provokes Urine wonderfully. It mollifies Tumors and swellings in the body, and is very predominant in opening the obstructions of the Liver. It is the most effectuall for clearing of the sight, being applied outwardly. It asswageth the unsufferable paine of the Gowt. Ale was famous...from the highest and Noblest Palace to the poorest or meanest Colltage. Ale is universall, and for Vertue it stands allowable with the best receipts of the most Antientest Physitians. Ale is rightly called Nappy, for it will set a nap upon a man's thred-bare eyes when he is sleepy. It is called Merry-goe-downe, for it slides down merrily. It is such a nourisher of Mankinde, that if my mouth were as bigge as Bishopsgate, my Pen as long as a Maypole, and my Inke a flowing spring, or a standing fishpond, yet I could not with Mouth, Pen, or Inke, speak or write the true worth and worthiness of Ale."

Read here for more about John Taylor, or here to sample more of his work.

Above: Detail of Portrait of John Taylor the Water-Poet by Thomas Cockson, 1630

Dressing for Autumn 1816

Loretta reports:

London & Paris can be cool to cold in the fall & spring.  So what about those ladies in their muslin dresses?  Did they go for heavier fabrics?  Layers?  Here’s what the November 1816 Ackermann’s Repository has to say.

LONDON FASHIONS
PLATE 29.—EVENING DRESS.
A lilac and white striped gauze dress over a white satin slip; the bottom of the skirt is ornamented with five rows of white silk trimming, of a very light and elegant description : it has just been introduced, and the pattern has more novelty than any thing we have seen for some time: a single flounce of deep blond lace completes the trimming. The body is also very novel; the upper part is formed of lace, and the lower of gauze, to correspond with the dress: the latter is quite tight to the shape, but the former has an easy fulness, which forms the shape in a manner extremely advantageous, to the figure. The sleeve is short and very full; it is composed of lace, looped high, and finished by a trimming to correspond with that on the skirt. The hair is full dressed, without any ornament. Necklace, cross, armlets, and bracelets of rubies. White satin slippers, and white kid gloves.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON
FASHION AND DRESS.
The month of November ought, if we were guided by the seasons, to enable us to present our fair readers with a splendid display of winter costume, but every body knows that the winter of Fashion does not commence till January.

FRENCH FEMALE FASHIONS.
PARIS, October 17...LATE as it is in the season, our promenade dresses are invariably composed of white: perkale is in high estimation, as are also plain and sprigged India muslins...Our promenade costume has at present an uniformity which fatigues the eye, not on account of white dresses only, but because belles of all ages now appear in square shawls...the transparent silk shawls, some of which are ornamented with borders of natural flowers in superb embroidery…are really beautiful, but certainly not calculated for the time of year; however, the season is the last thing a Frenchwoman considers.

Beautiful (and Potent!) Castor Beans

Susan reporting:

When we first came across these tall (over six feet), gaudy plants with their fantastic pods in one of the gardens in Colonial Williamsburg, we'd no idea what they were – though they did remind us of something contrived by Dr. Seuss. If we'd been an 18th c. housewife, however, we would have recognized them as once, and would likely have had one growing somewhere in our kitchen garden – much to the distress and dread of our children.

This is a castor bean plant, and the seeds that grow within the prickly pink capsules are the source of castor oil. While castor oil has a long history – ancient Egyptians burned it in their lamps – now the oil is primarily used as a lubricant and in hydraulic fluids, as well as in pharmaceutical applications and in manufactured goods ranging from soap to dyes.

The castor bean can be a dangerous plant as well. The seeds, stems, and leaves contain high levels of rincin, which is poisonous to humans and animals. In the strange way of nature, the oil derived from pressing the hulled seeds is not toxic, but considerable care must be taken while harvesting.

In the historical past that prized a good purge, castor oil was known for its ability to produce a swift result that one source describes as "exceptionally violent diarrhea." We agree that that sounds pretty hideous, but we suppose it was the historical version of a "cleanse" today.

We think we'd rather admire it from afar...

Cholera's first visit to Paris, 1832

Loretta reports:

Setting books in the 1830s has made me acutely conscious of the shadow cholera—currently raging through Haiti—cast across Europe in the 19th century. 

It first reached Paris in the spring of 1832.  The following numbers are the city's daily death toll for April. 

Apr 1—79, 2—168, 3—212, 4—342, 5—351, 6—416, 7—582, 8—769, 9—861, 10—848, 11—769, 12—768, 13—816, 14—692, 15—567, 16—512

“Up to the last of these dates, there had died in Paris alone, upwards of 8,700 persons ; and before the end of the month the number was nearly doubled….

“In Paris, as in Hungary, the populace took up the idea that the disease was indicted on them by their water and wine being poisoned. Under this impression they perpetrated the most atrocious murders ; it required but the finger of any miscreant to point out an obnoxious individual. An old Jew, who carried a bottle of camphor as a preservative, was called a poisoner, while passing through the market place of the Innocents. The market-women and poissardes attacked him, and he fell dead beneath repeated stabs. At Vaugirard, a village close by Paris, two young men, being attacked by the mob on the same pretext, sought refuge in the house of the magistrate. They were forced out, and murdered in the street. At Paris, however, less than any where else, did the cholera maintain its character of choosing its victims among the squalid, the needy, and the dissolute. The panic, that reigned throughout the capital, was enormously increased by the number of persons, in the higher ranks, on whom the malady laid hold. Peers of France, members of the Chamber of Deputies, of the courts of justice, and of the diplomatic body, swelled the triumph of the pestilence. On the 6th of April, it struck down the prime-minister himself; and although he recovered from the first shock, the hand of death had been laid upon him too heavily to be removed.”
—Excerpt from The Annual Register of 1832.