Happy Holidays!

Vernon, Season's Greetings

Susan & Loretta report:

‘Tis the season—and with suitably jolly and joyful spirits, the Two Nerdy History Girls are going to take our annual holiday break, to spend more time with our families and less time on social media. We may pop into the blog now and again with a picture or two and maybe a few words, but regularly scheduled blogging will not resume until 2018.

We thank you for continuing to share our historical enthusiasms, for encouraging us to continue, and for reading our books as well. They’re the reason we started blogging in the first place: all those bits of historical reality that wouldn’t fit neatly into our fiction but we just had to share. How lucky we are to have found so many like-minded readers!

Dear Readers, we wish you a very happy holiday season, and a splendid New Year. May it be a bright, healthy, and happy one for all of you.

Image: Émile Vernon, Season’s Greetings, courtesy Wikipedia

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

From the Archives: The Unsupervised Tailor's Apprentice & the Christmas Coat for a Cat, c. 1775

Susan reporting,

Most memoirs written by veterans of the Revolutionary War concentrate on glorious battles won, comrades lost, and patriotic fervor, and the memoirs of James Potter Collins (1763-1844) are no different. Born in Tryon County, NC, Collins enlisted in a local militia company at the age of seventeen, and saw action in several of the most important battles of the southern campaigns. But Collins's memoirs also include this entertaining anecdote from his days as a twelve-year-old tailor's apprentice with a bit too much unsupervised time.

"I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends...while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit. 

"Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day's work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in."

–– Autobiography of a Revolutionary Soldier, by James Potter Collins, published 1859

With his own master away from the shop for the holiday, Michael McCarty, above, a tailor's apprentice in the Historic Trades program, Colonial Williamsburg, was inspired to copy Collins' achievement, and make a miniature red hunting coat for his own cat. The coat was made to measure like every 18th c. gentleman's coat would have been, and cut and sewn entirely by hand of fine red woolen, trimmed in black with tiny covered buttons and gold-thread buttonholes. And just like young Collins' cat-coat, Michael's handiwork was on display in the shop window throughout the Christmas season, below left – although someday I'd really like to see it on the cat, too.

Update: I visited Colonial Williamsburg this past weekend, and although the tailors have now moved further down Duke of Gloucester Street to a new shop of their own, I'm happy to report that their holiday decorations still include the little red cat's coat, prominently pinned in the window.

Photographs copyright 2013 by Susan Holloway Scott. 

Dickens and the Cratchit Family's Christmas Pudding

Mrs. Cratchit by Arthur Rackham

Loretta reports:

I haven’t yet seen the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, but no one needs another movie to associate Charles Dickens with the holiday, thanks to his story, A Christmas Carol.

This past summer, while in London, I spent a few hours touring the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street. Among many items claiming my attention was the kitchen, because we Nerdy History Girls are always curious about everyday life. This house, which reflects the author’s lifestyle when he was just beginning to be famous, is very much a middle-class household, considerably upscale from that of Mr. Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit.

I offer some images from the kitchen, and leave you to imagine the process of making a Christmas pudding, even in this comfortable household. Then, please imagine what it might have been like for Mrs. Cratchit in her humbler abode. As a museum sign pointed out, “The Cratchit family had only one small pudding, but in a household such as 48 Doughty Street, there were often many spare puddings, cooked and stored for use at other celebrations throughout the year. Filled with spirits, old ale and spices, the puddings were well preserved on larder shelves and were even believed to improve in taste as they aged.”

Yes, that's the kitchen sink

But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses— to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough 1 Suppose it should break in turning out ! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid All sorts of horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding ! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly —with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding ! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up.
—“A Christmas Carol,” from The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume 13

Hedgehogs used for insect control

Photos of Charles Dickens Museum copyright © Loretta Chekani 2017
Illustration of Mrs. Cratchit carrying in the pudding by Arthur Rackham for 1915 edition.
Please click on images to enlarge.

Friday Video: A Victorian Christmas & Victorian Dolls

Loretta reports:

Looking for some holiday-type historical footage for the Friday video, I came upon these stereoscopic images of staged, late-Victorian Christmas celebrations. Many of the images seem a little eerie to me. But then, Victorian images often are. In this case, too, the strange “animation,” combined with the stereoscopic effect, heightens the sensation.

But I was struck by the little girls cradling their dolls, an image that remains familiar and sweet.



Then I remembered the photos of Victorian toys—mainly dolls and doll furniture—I took in September at the Provincetown Museum, which is part of the Pilgrim Monument.* I could picture little girls on Christmas morning, lovingly holding these dolls when they were new.


*No, I didn’t climb to the top of the monument. There’s quite a lovely panoramic view on the website.

 

Video: 3D Stereoscopic Photographs of Christmas in the Victorian Era (1889-1902)


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. Please click on images to enlarge.

From the Archives: Mistletoe Madness, 1796

Susan reporting:

In modern holiday celebrations, mistletoe has become something of a kitsch-y joke, the inevitable prop for I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus humor.

But in the 1790s, when the print, left, was published, mistletoe still had an aura of wickedness, even danger. The ancient Druidic traditions linking mistletoe and fertility had not been forgotten, and kissing beneath the mistletoe was thought to lead to promiscuity, or even - shudder! - marriage.

Certainly the four merry young  couples in this print appear to be enjoying themselves. Some scholarly descriptions refer to this as a dance scene, and perhaps it does show nothing more than a particularly rollicking country dance.

Still, I can't help but think that at any moment some stern-faced, indignant elder is going to appear in the doorway and demand to know what exactly is going on down here. I'm guessing the artist thought that, too, from the caption he added to the bottom: "Whilst Romp loving Miss is haul'd about/With gallantry robust." (The attribution to Milton is incorrect; the line is from a poem by the 18th c. Scottish poet James Thomson.) In any event, there's no doubt that these are romp-loving misses being haul'd about by their robust gallants. No wonder Christmas mistletoe was so popular!

Above: The mistletoe, or, Christmas gambols, by Edward Penny, 1796, London. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.