Casual Friday: A Scene in a London Street, 1770

Isabella reporting:

The modest title of this painting by John Collet – A Scene in a London Street – has to be one of the greatest understatements in art history. There's enough happening in this painting for an entire movie. (Click the image to enlarge, and if you want to see even more detail, here's a link to a larger jpg.) Front and center is The New Bagnio, clearly a dubious establishment where bathing is taking a back seat to more risque shenanigans, and it appears we've just missed witnessing some sort of street fight.

Not to get too "Where's Waldo?", but here are a few things to look for:
   • The "loose" lady without stays, stepping from a hired sedan chair
   • The bailiff with his tipstaff, and a forlorn debtor newly in captivity
   • The Bath Fly, a coach traveling between London and Bath, with partyin' passengers on top
   • A monkey, dressed in a mini-turban
   • A pet dog dressed in a kerchief
   • A chimney-swift peering from a chimney
   • The large basket belonging to a strawberry street-vendor, with smaller cone-shaped pottle-baskets (see another strawberry vendor with similar baskets here)
   • The irate vendor (or is she the bagnio's madame?) attacking the fallen gentleman (perhaps an officer?) in the street, one of her baskets still on his sword
   • The angry folk on the left: thieves, more vendors, sailors, or...what?
   • The same hapless gentleman's shaved head, and his wig, complete with bow, knocked to the pavement.

What else can you discover?

Above: A Scene in a London Street, by John Collet, c. 1725-1780, Yale Center for British Art.

Fashions for January 1826

Loretta reports:

Red’s a popular winter color as we’ve shown here & here, and alert readers will notice a distinct resemblance to the carriage dress of December 1823.

From The Ladies' Monthly Museum, Volume 23, 1826


Following the description of the plates, the magazines usually provide an overview of the latest fashions for the month.  This January entry is interesting, especially the furs.

To enlarge, please click on the illustrations.

New Year's Day Calls in New York, 1847 & 1870

Isabella reporting:

While this description of a New Year's Day from 1847 is nearly contemporary with the one (1854) in Loretta's post yesterday, the celebration couldn't be more different.

In the genteel society of early 19th c. New York, New Year's Day was observed with a ritual of polite calls. Gentlemen put on their best clothes, and one by one visited each of the ladies of their acquaintance. While this must have made for a busy day for the gentlemen – at least the popular ones – the ladies, too, had to offer a considerable repast to their callers. Etiquette advisors of the day stressed that this should be informal and light, but clearly much more was expected than today's beer and a bucket of wings served with a bowl game on the flat-screen, as this excerpt from a New York cookbook shows:

"In New York City, where it is the custom for ladies to remain at home to receive the calls of their gentlemen friends, there is not time nor occasion for dinner; should it be desirable, it would be similar to that for Christmas, or instead – a cold roasted turkey (bone it if you can), cold boiled ham or tongue, a large glass salad-bowl of pickled oysters, or an oyster pie with dressed celery or a chicken salad, with jelly puffs and tarts and small mince pies, blancmange, de russe and jellies and ice cream and fancy cakes, with syrup water and orgeat or lemonade for temperance, or wines and punch. The manner of celebrating New Year's day by calls, is a peculiarity of our own, and having so few which are 'native here,' many of our wisest and best, have wished that this might in no wise be slighted. Many a feud-divided family have been united, and misunderstanding friends have been brought together, under the all-pervading hospitality and genial influence which distinguishes the day."

                                      ––The American System of Cookery, Mrs. T.J. Crowen, 1847

As charming as this tradition sounds, its days were already numbered. In Edith Wharton's short story New Year's Day, set in New York in the 1870s, the New Year's calls have become a nearly-forgotten curiosity:

"Even then fashion moved quickly in New York, and my infantile memory barely reached back to the time when Grandmamma, in lace lappets and creaking moire, used to receive on New Year's Day, supported by her handsome married daughters. As for old Sillerton Jackson, who, once a social custom had dropped into disuse, always affected never to have observed it, he stoutly maintained that the New Year's Day ceremonial had never been taken seriously except among families of Dutch descent, and that that was why Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had clung to it, in a reluctant half-apologetic way, long after her friends had closed their doors on the first of January, and the date had been chosen for those out-of-town parties which are so often used as a pretext for absence when the unfashionable are celebrating their rites."
                                    ––New Year's Day, by Edith Wharton, 1924

Above: Detail, Fashions for 1845, by S.A. & A.F.Ward. Collection of Library Company of Philadelphia

New Year's Day, Minnesota, 1854

The Female Eagle - Shawano

Loretta reports:

I stumbled on the following at the Library of Congress, and thought it would be an interesting entry for New Year's Day.  It was news to me, certainly.  The excerpt is from “Recollections of New Year’s of 1854 as recalled by Charles E. Flandrau, in later life a prominent Minnesota jurist.”  For more from the collection, please click on the link below.

~~~

Making the Rounds on New Year's
While speaking of New Year's day, I must not forget my first New Year's day among the Indians. It was in 1857. The Sioux know the day and celebrate it. How they discovered it I am unable to say, but probably they learned it from the French missionaries. They call it "Kissing Day." I was the United States Agent for the Sioux, and was detained up at the Yellow Medicine river for some reason, I forget what. I was informed that it would be expected of me to give all the women who happened to be about the Agency a present. So I had several barrels of gingerbread baked, and purchased many bolts of calico, which I had cut up into dress pieces, ready for delivery. About ten in the forenoon the squaws began to assemble near the Agency, and I seated myself in the main room to await events. At first they were shy (I was not the grizzly old fellow then that I am now). Soon an old wa-kon-ka came sidling up like a crab, and gave me a kiss; then came another, and another, until, young and old, I had kissed and been kissed by forty-eight squaws. I kept an exact tally, especially of the young and pretty ones. They all got their gingerbread and dresses, and went away very happy; whether their joy rested wholly on the cakes and calico, I never was exactly satisfied in my own mind. So you see the civilized and the savage do not differ very much in their methods of amusing themselves. It is a serious question whether modern innovations will be an improvement over the past in such matters.

—The Frontier Holiday. Per LOC summary, "This collection of brief first-person descriptions and anecdotes chronicles how Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving were celebrated in nineteenth-century Minnesota. The materials are drawn from documents at the Minnesota Historical Society, and many have appeared before in print."

Illustration:  George Catlin, The Female Eagle - Shawano, 1830, from the Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.  Photo of the painting courtesy me.

Day V:Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, 2012

Isabella reporting:

Before I wind up these posts from Colonial Williamsburg, I did want to mention the weather. While much of the country was suffering the effects of Winter Storm Freyr, Williamsburg's milder climate meant that the precipitation on the day after Christmas was heavy rain, not snow. But the temperatures did drop after that, and the addition of a blustery wind made for true winter weather, Virginia-style.

So how to dress for an 18th c. winter day? Georgian Virginians could have summed up their winter style in the same single word that their modern contemporaries do: layers. Quilted wool petticoats and waistcoats, thick stockings, scarves, mittens, caps, and mitts under heavy woolen cloaks were mandatory for those of every class who ventured out-of-doors, as interpreters Courtney Colligan and Amanda Davis demonstrate, right.

Yet even in a colonial city far from London, there were ladies who were as concerned about being fashionable as keeping warm. Although I didn't see our friends from the Margaret Hunter millinery shop outside during this visit, I found the photograph from an earlier Christmas season, left, of mantua-maker's apprentice Sarah Woodyard, ready to run an errand for her mistress. An 18th c. apprentice was a walking advertisement for her shop's wares, and Sarah's cloak is wool-lined silk, with a matching muff to keep her hands warm. (For more about her clothes, see the earlier post.)

A tailor's apprentice would also be expected to make a stylish figure when he left his shop. Michael McCarty, right, has been send out on his master's business, leather case in hand. He's chosen an uncocked, flat-brimmed hat and a neat, dark red woolen suit (waistcoat, breeches, and jacket.) His great coat of grey wool beaver may look familiar; we've seen it here before, worn by tailor Mark Hutter. (See here for more about the great coat.)

All photographs by Susan Holloway Scott.