Footnotes on Friday

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Fact, Historical fiction, Fantasy

As the eighteenth century ended in revolution and war, fashions changed. Woman began wearing the simpler style of women’s clothing, known now as empire line, after the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte whose wife Josephine popularised the fashion.

But in the court of Queen Charlotte, queen of Great Britain, the hoops of her youth still prevailed. Which led to the bizarre fashion pictured above — an empire silhouette for the bodice, with a hoop, petticoat, and overskirt below. As if hoops weren’t enough to handle, the poor debutante of the time also had to handle a train, plus between three and eight ostrich plumes in her hair. Probably not pinned in place by a tiara, since tiaras were only for adults, and the girls being presented to the queen for the first time were generally too young to be regarded as adults. (Old enough to marry, though, since the purpose of their debut was to signal their availability as brides.)

All of which is by way of saying that, in the first episode of Brigerton, I picked up six historical errors before the first titles. The non-court style dress, the lack of ostrich feathers, the presence of the younger children in the audience at court… it goes on and on. By the time Anthony Brigerton dropped his pants, quite unnecessarily, since unbuttoning his fall would have been sufficient, I had quite sensibly given up.

The story Julia Quinn wrote was Fiction. The Shondaland version was Fantasy — a delightful froth with a mashup of fashions, practices, and historical miscellany. I loved it. I recommend it. It’s a delightful romp. And I hope it will lead to a greater interest in the genre I love. But if you’re going to watch it, leave your historical research knowledge at the door.

 

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A Tale of Two Princes

The handsome young pair above are Prince George, the Prince of Wales, and his next youngest brother, Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. They were fifteen and fourteen respectively when this was painted. Prince George was two years off his much-publicised affair with the actress Mary Robinson that marked the transition of his strained relationship with his father from sullen obedience to open rebellion, and that gave him the moniker ‘Florizel’.

Poor George was stuck with the role of Prince of Wales–fundamentally king in waiting and by all that’s holy boy, you’d better wait patiently. Frederick, on the other hand, was gazetted as an officer in the army the following year. So the age of seventeen was momentous for both of them: one set out publicly on a life of hedonism, display, emotional excesses and rebellion, and the other began a career in the army, and is credited with accomplishments that include carrying out the major reforms that fitted the army for the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic wars, founding Sandhurst, a military school which promoted merit-based training for future officers.

Yes, he had an expensive gambling habit, but he was also a hardworking military officer and later served in the House of Lords.

The Prince of Wales, on the other hand, had to invent his own role. Patron of the arts, pain in his father’s rear end, lover, entertainer, home renovator extraordinaire… poor George.

 

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Cravats, Kerchiefs, and Neck Ties

One of the great benefits of leaving his last office job, according to my personal romantic hero, was that he could get rid of most of his neckties. Ghastly things, he reckons, with no practical purpose. He kept a couple for formal occasions, and the rest went to the charity shop, to torture some other poor fellow.

I was thinking about that the other day, as a friend and I looked at a period inappropriate book cover. According to the artist, the male model was Victorian, but that’s a period of more than six decades. Men’s neckwear changed in that time, so I went looking to find out how and when.

First, let me take you back to the beginning. Neck scarves of some kind were worn in ancient times. We can see them in the Terracotta Warriors, in Roman soldiers on Trajan’s Column,  and in pictures of medieval knights and Mongol warriors. A likely purpose was as a practical garment to tuck round the edge of armour to stop chafing, or to perhaps to stop sweat from rolling down the neck and setting up an itch, or to keep the neck warm, or even for multiple purposes, not the least of which might be battlefield medicine.

Their evolution from a practical garment to sartorial elegance dates back to the Thirty Years War. This was a conflict fought in Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century, as part of the struggle for dominance between the Austro-Spanish Hapsburgs and the French Bourbons. The French hired mercenaries from Croatia, and they wore a neck scarf to tie the top of their tunics shut. The look caught on among the French and spread from there. Of course, the aristocrats who adopted the fashion wore lace cravats (La Cravatte was the name given to the neckwear by Louis XIII; a nod to the Croatians).

The lace got steadily more extravagant through the early part of the eighteenth century, and matched with lace cuffs made a spectacular show.

Then came the French Revolution, which affected fashion as well as politics. The revolutionaries affected a less ostentatious style of dress, and — in fashion — where the French led, the rest of Europe followed. The cravat we know from Regency movies and books was born. The cravat covered all but the collar of the shirt, and often that, as well — a shirt being regarded as underclothes at the time. A long rectangle of fabric was folded and intricately knotted to the specifications of the wearer (or his valet, but a gentleman with pretensions to elegance would not trust such an important detail to his valet).

At the turn of the century, Beau Brummell dictated that the cravat should be a crisp white as should the stockings, the breeches and coat black, and only the waistcoat in colour. Of course, not everyone agreed, and cravats of all colours can be seen in paintings of the time.

The simplest and most casual way of tying a cravat was to wrap it around the neck several times and tie a bow, and this became highly fashionable as the nineteenth century wore on. By the 1850s, gentlemen were wearing a black cravat or bow tie, simply folded and pinned so that the shirt showed between the bottom of the tie and the top of the waistcoat. A thinner piece of material became the Ascot tie, so called because it was casual wear for events such as race meetings–recognisably a necktie like those still worn today, but much wider, and pinned to the shirt.

The next evolution was the club tie, purportedly created in the 1880s, when the rowing team of Exeter College, Oxford, took the striped bands off their hats and tied them around their necks.

The modern necktie was invented by an American in the 1920s — three pieces of material cut on the bias, thus eliminating wrinkles. My husband’s least favourite item of men’s clothing had arrived.

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The farmhouse that grew

Once upon a time there was a prince who liked to go to the seaside. One of his favourite uncles lived in Brighton, and George found the seaside resort very much to his taste. He rented a rather pleasant farmhouse, Brighton House, from a member of his staff, and later entered into a lease that let him make the changes he wanted.

The architect he chose, Henry Holland, built a rotunda over the grand dining room, and added a new wing. Brighton House became Marine Pavilion.

But it didn’t stop there. Next came extensive stables, with room for 60 horses. The stables were even bigger than the house.

But soon, that wasn’t enough. I guess the prince was having fun. The interiors were originally neoclassical, but the prince was soon having them all converted to the new oriental style, and then he had some even grander ideas. The original architect built on again, adding more rooms, but that still wasn’t enough. By 1815, a new architect, John Nash, was working on the building we have today–little is left of the first two incarnations of the building, apart from the room under one of the new domes, once the dining room, then the grand saloon.

The building was finally finished in 1823, and by then our prince was king, and too busy for more than two more visits to the farmhouse that grew.

***

I was looking into this because I had my heroine in my latest book visit the Royal Pavilion, and I suddenly thought to check whether it had been built yet. It hadn’t. It was still the Marine Pavilion.

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The long shadow of war

The battle of Waterloo was touch and go; one of those victories where so many people die, that even the side that wins still loses. The casualty rate (dead, wounded and missing) was around 45% (of a total 185,000), and this was only the culminating battle in a long war with the French that lasted, with only small breaks, from 1789 until that great battle in 1815.

One of the most moving museum exhibitions I’ve ever been to was the Maori Battalion exhibition at the Rotorua Museum. The exhibits included diary notes and letters from military personnel, and video clips of interviews with them. In World War 1, over a third of those who served in the Battalion were killed or injured. In World War II, of 16,000 men who enlisted, 3,600 joined the Maori Battlion. Close to two-thirds were killed, wounded, taken prisoner or reported missing. The impact of the loss of two generations of young leaders (to death or to the after-effects of war) has been argued about for most of my lifetime. I remember one clip where the soldier interviewed talked about how, in the heat of war, he didn’t think about the number of his brothers-in-arms left behind buried in enemy soil. Then he came home, and saw the gaps in his community; saw the memorials in his wharenui (meeting house).

Deaths attributed to that long war involving France, the British and the rest of Europe are somewhere in the region of three plus million (military and civilian). What did that do to Europe, an area that, in 1800, had an estimated population of 150 million? Great Britain wasn’t fought of over, but it lost a staggering number of military personnel. It started the nineteenth century with not quite nine million people, and lost more than 300,000 soldiers and sailors in the next fifteen years. Think of it like this. Out of every 15 men, one died. That number doesn’t include the ones that keep turning up in my books–maimed, scarred, afflicted with nightmares.

My own generation was raised by people who went through the second world war, and theirs by the survivors of the first. On 11 November, when the military were left fighting right up to the time appointed for the armistice–even though peace had been more or less agreed for three days and signed for six hours–we do well to remember that the long shadow of war continues after the war ends.

 

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Rotton boroughs and voting reform

The term ‘rotton borough’ was used in England from the eighteenth century. It meant an electoral district where population changes meant a tiny population that had a disproportionate number of Parliamentary representatives for its size. For example, Old Sarum, a borough on the land of the Pitt family, had three houses, seven voters and three Members of Parliament. William Pitt the Elder was one of those MPs. Another rotton borough was Appleby, which William Pitt the Younger was elected to represent when he was 21. The rotton boroughs were valuable properties, and sold for well over market price, since they included the right to more or less elect any Member of Parliament they chose.

At the same time, huge cities had no voters at all, since they had grown in places that historically had tiny populations.

At the time (and through until the late 19th century), voting in England was confined to men who own a certain amount of property. From the fifteenth century, all owners of land worth more than forty shillings were able to vote. Women weren’t specifically excluded, but for the most part they didn’t own land; it belonged to their fathers and husbands.

Voting was regarded as a public service. Those with the responsibility would make their vote known in public, and might expect to be rewarded (or treated)–or threatened, if the vote wasn’t what the strong men of the borough wanted. The secret ballot didn’t come in until 1872.

Rotton boroughs disappeared earlier, in the Reform Act of 1832. Fifty-six Parliamentary Boroughs lost their Members of Parliament, their remaining voters becoming eligible to participate in County elections. The idea that the House of Representatives should be occupied by… well… representatives had taken a great step forward.

 

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Medicine: a woman’s place

For my current work-in-progress, I’ve been looking at women physicians in history. My heroine is a doctor, informally trained as an apprentice to other doctors and through private tutorials. Most of this learning took place in her parents own kingdom in the Central Asian mountains of Kopet Dag, or in nearby Iran. This was certainly the path to knowledge for most female practitioners of medicine in Western history. Was it feasible for my Ruth?

In short words, yes. Looked at from the point of view of gender politics, the history of medicine in most cultures has been depressingly similar. Women have done most of the work and got the blame for things going wrong, while men have got the education, the pay and the glory. That might seem quite a large claim, but think about it. Women were responsible for the management of a household, which included care of the sick and treatment of minor injuries. Even today, who usually puts band aids on the cuts and kisses the bruises better? On a community level, someone usually had a greater interest in and better knowledge of herbs and their effects than others, and that person would pass on her knowledge. When home care failed, those who couldn’t afford a university educated doctor or even a surgeon-barber would see the local herb-wife.

A particularly successful healer might find herself something of a threat both to those doctors and to the local religious authorities, who, in many cultures, ran the universities and licensed the doctors. So women’s knowledge was downplayed or discredited. The only part of medicine that women were encouraged to practice was midwifery, until men began to take that over, too.  Until recently, the contribution of women has been largely ignored in medicine, as in other fields.

“How amazing is this [that patients are cured at all], considering that they hand over their lives to senile old women! For most people, at the onset of illness, use as their physicians either their wives, mothers or aunts, or some [other] member of their family or one of their neighbours. He [the patient] acquiesces to whatever extravagant measure she might order, consumes whatever she prepares for him, and listens to what she says and obeys her commands more than he obeys the physician.” Sā’id ibn al-Hasan (died 1072)

Nonetheless, the tradition of female physicians and healers goes back to ancient times. There’s a story of a woman in Greece around 2400 years ago who went to Alexandria to train, since the Egyptians had female doctors, and was so successful when she got back to Athens that she was arrested for breaking the law. Her female patients mobbed the court and they had to let her go. (In another version of the story, she trained privately with a sympathetic doctor, and practiced disguised as a man. Other doctors, jealous of her popularity with female patients, accused her of sleeping with them. In court, she stripped off to show she was female.) Be that as it may, we know that Greece had women practicing medicine, as did the Romans.

Most cultures have left traces of elite women who practice medicine–women who are born into a physician family and grow up as apprentices in the trade, or who have access to the wealth and education to defy the norms.

In Britain, we know of at least one woman who attended university as a man and practiced medicine for more than 50 years. She was identified as a man after she died in 1865. Other women were accepted (reluctantly) into the profession because they had qualified in universities overseas. One woman was harassed and abused right through her medical course at Edinburgh university and was awarded a Certificate of Proficiency when she completed the course, rather than the degree given to her male counterparts. She went to Berne, and then to Dublin, and returned with a qualification that allowed her to be registered as a doctor.

In the Ottoman empire, men had several recognised roles in medicine: physician, surgeon, ophthamologist. Women did not have access to formal training or formal recognition, and female medical practitioners were all called midwifes, whatever form of medical care they offered. But nonetheless, women practiced medicine, learning from family or other mentors and private tutors. Indeed, given the strict segregation at the highest level of Ottoman society, female physicians must have been essential on the women’s side of any great house.

My interest, though, is in Iran and its sphere of influence, the Turkmen tribes to the north and east. Did the same apply there? It certainly did in medieval times. I’m still trying to track specific sources for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but meanwhile I’m following the usual cultural pattern in my Ruth’s training.

Ashbury pursed his lips and she waited for him to lecture her on her presumption, but he surprised her with a question. “Minnich tells me you are a physician. Where did you train, Lady Ruth? In the same place as you acquired your warlike attendants? Somewhere in the East, I assume?”

She inclined her head in agreement. “I apprenticed with several healers, including a physician who trained at a teaching hospital in Baghdad. I have also studied with Western physicians, though not since my family arrived in England.” She sighed. “I am well qualified to attend your niece, my lord, even though I am a woman.” And you have no one else, she wanted to tell him.

His eyebrows jerked upwards in response. “That’s not — I am not questioning your abilities, my lady.” His short laugh held no amusement. “I cannot afford to, after all. I have no alternative to offer.”

 

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Virtual historic tours

If you can’t go to the wonderful historic sites that we write about, you can still visit. Here are some links to get you started.

Heritage virtual tours: 360 virtual tours of incredible heritage sites, including British Royal Palaces; the Royal Opera House; historic buildings and castles like Wrest Park and Bovey Castle, as well as renowned distilleries such as Remy Martin and The Balvenie; galleries, museums and their exhibits, such as unique historic aircraft.

Virtual tours, panorama, and models from the BBC History division

The Louvre, where you can check out virtual tours of the Egyptian antiquities collection, remains of the Louvre’s moat and the Galerie d’Apollon

The Sistine chapel, with its incredible art.

Some of the most walkable sections of the Great Wall of China

The British Museum, the world’s oldest national public museum.

And more:

  • https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wildlife/countryside/g32000722/virtual-uk-landmark-tours/
  • https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/attractions/london-virtual-tours-attractions-landmarks-coronavirus-lockdown-a4401481.html
  • https://www.history.com/news/10-best-virtual-museums-tours-history-from-home
  • https://www.travelandleisure.com/culture-design/architecture-design/google-arts-culture-app-europe-castles
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Will you be my Valentine?

The St Valentine we remember on this day was probably a Roman martyred for being a Christian sometime in the 3rd century. (There are at least two other candidates: one a bishop in Terni, and one who lived in Africa.) Legend has it that St Valentine performed secret marriage ceremonies for soldiers during a time they were not permitted to marry, and that he sent a letter to his jailer’s daughter signed ‘From your Valentine’.

February 14th has been associated with St Valentine since at least the 5th century. February 14th was also considered the start of Spring in Europe, and one tradition holds that it is the day the birds choose a mate. This tradition may go back to a Roman Spring Festival, celebrated from February 13th to 15th. Whichever came first, by the Middle Ages, when the French and English became devoted to the concept of courtly love, St Valentines became a day for people to declare their love.

In parts of Sussex Valentines Day was called ‘the Birds’ Wedding Day’ until quite recently. In Hamlet, Shakespeare mentions the tradition that the first man an unmarried woman sees on Valentine’s day will be her husband, when Ophelia sings:

Good morrow! ‘Tis St. Valentine’s Day
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your valentine!

Other traditions and superstitions associated with  Valentine’s day include:

  • if the names of all a girl’s suitors were written on paper and wrapped in clay and the clay put into water, the piece that rose to the surface first would contain the name of her husband-to-be
  • if unmarried women pinned four bay leaves to the corners of their pillow and ate eggs with salt replacing the removed yokes on Valentine’s day eve, they would dream of their future husband
  • if a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine’s Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry a rich person.
  • in Wales wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on February 14th. Hearts, keys and keyholes were favourite decorations on the spoons. The decoration meant, “You unlock my heart!”

Valentine cards have been made since at least the 17th century, though the explosion in the number waited till the invention of a steam powered printing press and the penny post in the mid 19th century.

Happy Valentine’s day.

Do enjoy it with five tales of a love to warm your heart in the Bluestocking Belles’ latest collection, Fire & Frost.

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Waltzing the night away

When we Regency writers include a waltz in our stories, I believe our readers see something like this — the Victorian variety, which is fairly close to how we dance it now.

 

In fact, it was a lot closer to this (by the 1820s):

Or even this (when couple dancing really got going after about 1810 — 30 years earlier on the continent):

Before that, the term waltz referred to a long dance to a piece of music with three beats in the bar, or to the music itself.

Then, of course, there is a modern waltz.

https://youtu.be/Rpd9LqD2BHs