Blast from the Past: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

For me as a kid, no summer was complete without a trip to our local amusement park, now sadly razed and turned into a condominium complex. So this Blast from the Past is a slightly bittersweet one...aside from the history geek in me simply loving it!


Isn't this wonderful...not to mention amazing--an early roller coaster! It's from a series of prints entitled "Le Bon Genre", originally published in France in 1817 (a second series came out in 1822 and a third in 1827) as an amusing look at life and entertainment among the fashionable classes in and around Paris. Note the little oil lamps on posts running down the sides--wherever this was, you could evidently ride it at night. I can't help wondering if a lot of ladies lost those wonderfully fluffy ostrich plumes off their hats--you may not be able to see it very well, but the lady half-way down the slide is reaching for hers with an alarmed look on her face. And I wonder if that little girl is about to say "Can we go again? Pleeeeease?" In French, of course.

So much for Six Flags, huh?

I Have It on Good Authority That . . .

We’re back! Well, almost. Marissa and I told you we’d take a little break this summer by reposting some of our past personal favorites. I’m actually getting a jump on September, because I finished my manuscript a few days early and I just had to celebrate with a new post. The Irresistible Earl is winging its way to my editor’s desk, and I am going to spend the next week reading, a treat I had to deny myself for awhile to get everything done. I’m halfway through The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor and loving every minute. I’m even going to splurge a little and go out to dinner with my husband at his favorite restaurant, Gustav’s in Leavenworth, Washington.

But if I were a young lady in nineteenth century England, I wouldn’t have to splurge on eating out. As long as I had a story to tell, I’d be welcome everywhere.

Remember this was a time before telephones, televisions, Internet, and many of the other sources of amusement and information we use today. One of the best ways to be entertained was to ask witty people to dine with you. And if they had a good story to tell, so much the better.

What kinds of stories? Well, some would have qualified for the evening news: disasters like fires or floods, crimes, and skirmishes with the enemy. “No, no, I swear to you, the Thames just swept them out to sea! You wouldn’t think a petticoat would act as a sail, would you?”

Celebrity sightings were also quite popular. “My dear, did I tell you I saw Prinny today? He was wearing a corset! I distinctly heard it creak. And what was he doing on Bond Street when he was supposed to be closeted with his ministers? I do believe it was his own closet he was furthering, if you take my meaning.”

Then there was family drama. “I have it on good authority that Lord and Lady Makebait intend to cut off their youngest son’s quarterly allowance. A bit too much of those funds made their way to the ponies and the ladies, and neither was particularly happy about the event.”

Or awards and honors. “Yes, and that’s how I was awarded the Grand Order of the Hippocampus Post Mentos, Second Degree.”

And romance. “I do believe an offer is imminent. Why else ask me what size shoes I wear?”

I teased Marissa that if this was the nineteenth century, I could dine out for a month on the story of how she won her latest literary award. What about you? What story would you tell if you have to sing for your supper?

In the Night Garden

No, that’s not a title to a M. Night Shyamalan movie, and I’m not going to discuss the children’s television program. There was a different kind of garden in the nineteenth century, a garden that was truly best by night: the Pleasure Garden.

The idea was that landscaped grounds illuminated by lanterns were both breathtaking and mysterious. People paid to come and walk around, perhaps listen to a concert, perhaps sneak off for a little kiss behind the willow. Who knows what could happen under the canopy of the stars?

The most famous of the Pleasure Gardens was Vauxhall, on the south bank of the Thames near London. It opened generally in May and ran Monday, Wednesday, and Friday starting at 7:00pm hrough the summer months. Like Disneyland today, the entire arrangement was designed to transport you to another place, a fairy land, for one night.

You might arrive by carriage after crossing Westminster Bridge, but just as often you would take a ferry across to Vauxhall Stairs. The dark water crossing was part of the show. Once at the garden gate, you paid the entrance fee of a few shillings. Such a low fee guaranteed that people from all walks of life could enter. That also was part of the show. You never knew who you’d be rubbing shoulders with at Vauxhall—the laundress who did your shirts or the Prince of Wales himself.

Vauxhall consisted acres of trees, hedges, and charming little pavilions. Some areas of the garden were illuminated by the glow of colored lanterns. One contemporary account claims the garden boasted 37,000 such lanterns. Other areas were intentionally dark, giving cover to secret lovers. You might stroll along a particular walk, nodding to acquaintances, stopping to chat or enjoy a piece of art or statue that was being illuminated that night. You also scurried to secure your own pavilion for the evening’s entertainment. Each pavilion featured a table and chairs as well as paintings by some of the most popular artists of the day, including Hogarth and Hayman.

While every attempt was made to keep the garden safe and secure, the possibility of danger was part of the thrill of attendance. The stories told in dozens of books are only too right: a lady had to be careful where she walked in Vauxhall. It was just as easy to lose your purse as your virtue.

But as long as you were careful in your connections, you could have a great time! Every night an orchestra performed a concert of the latest songs from the most popular composers, and sometimes renowned singers joined them. Half way through the concert a bell signaled the illumination of the Cascade, which was a huge waterfall display in the center of the garden. Apparently it was only lit for 15 minutes. Given the technology difficulties of uniting lanterns and water, one can imagine why. The night finished with a brilliant fireworks display.

Special occasions called for a grander show, and steeper ticket prices. In 1813 Vauxhall held a massive party to celebrate Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Vittoria. In 1814, the gardens featured a mock naval battle, complete with canon fire and ships sinking under billows of smoke.

You know, I’m thinking the Disney analogy isn’t that far off!

Bonus: When I was confirming some facts for this post, I ran across an outstanding online resource. If you are interested in learning more about Vauxhall, point your browser to David Coke’s Vauxhall Garden’s page. The author’s credentials appear impeccable, and the details, including links to more information, are all a lover of history could want.

Books, Part I

In the 19th century, when the only definition of “Amazon” was a mythological female warrior, books and reading were something of a paradox.

Remember, there was no TV, no game systems, no DVDs, no internet. The only forms of self-entertainment you could do when sitting quietly in a chair were needlework or reading (or drizzling!) Yet the actual number of books available to read was small: according to figures I’ve read, in 1830 there were only about 1100 new titles published in England, in editions of about 750-1200 copies. And their cost was in inverse proportion to their availability: by the middle of that decade the average three-volume book cost thirty one shillings sixpence…compare that to the average weekly wage of a laboring man, which was between six and twenty shillings. For the earlier decades of the century, books truly were a luxury item.

So what did anyone who wasn't extremely wealthy do for reading material?

Easy. They joined a reading society or subscribed to a circulating library. For a yearly fee, a subscriber could borrow books from these private libraries, which ranged from small side-line businesses run by shopkeepers in small villages to quite large establishments in larger towns. Jane Austen was an avid circulating library subscriber and had the pleasure of seeing her own (anonymously published) books available there: her niece’s comment on a new book at their local library entitled “Sense and Sensibility, by a Lady” was “It must be nonsense with a title like that.” Aunt Jane was vastly amused.

Books also differed slightly in form from what we know today. Walter Scott made the publication of novels in three volumes popular--one story, divided up into three books. Books were also commonly purchased without a binding: you got the title page and text, and then took them to a bookbinder to be bound in the leather cover of your choice, with or without gilt lettering and embossing. Once you finally sat down to read your book, you had to be armed with a knife. The pages of books were printed two per side on a long piece of paper, and the pages then bound--so you had to slit the pages apart with a paper knife, which is why the edges of the pages of old books are always slightly jagged and uneven. (Look closely at our ladies in the print at left--see the tongue-depressor-like thing in the hand of Pink Dress?) Even today you can run across antique books with uncut pages.

Next week: Fordyce’s Sermons, Mad Monks, and Silver Fork Novels

If Music be the Food of Love, Pass the Antacids

Looking at this picture (it's from Ackermann's Repository, March 1819), can't you just tell by the way she's gazing up at the ceiling that she's singing waaaay out of tune? And maybe fat-fingering those chords as well? I just love this print.

But Regina's post a few weeks back on music as a required accomplishment for a nineteenth century miss made me think about something else...the fact that if you wanted to hear music, you pretty much had to make it yourself. There were no iPods, no downloads, no CDs, no radio. The first sound-recording device wasn't invented until 1877 by Thomas Edison, and widespread consumer use of the earliest recorded sound machines wasn't until well into the 1890s.

So there was a reason that an "accomplished" young lady learned to play pianoforte, or harp, or guitar like this girl: unless you went to a concert, doing it yourself was the only source of music there was.

For example...have you seen the A&E mini-series of Pride and Prejudice? You know, Colin Firth and all that? Remember that whenever there was a party, like the ones at Meryton or at Netherfield, a group of actual musicians was hired to provide music for dancing--no DJs or sound systems. And when people got together at someone's house, Mary Bennet always got dragged into playing music on her beloved piano that she obviously loathed so that everyone else could dance.

So our friend here strumming away on her rather squared-off guitar was probably entertaining friends after dinner or whiling away an evening around the drawing room fire with Mama and Papa. Because if you wanted to hear some music, that's how you did it.

(This is a repost of a previous posting that we had to take down because for some reason, it turned into utter unreadability when viewed on a Mac. We still don't know why. Dontcha love technology?)

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Part One: "La Ramassel"

Isn't this wonderful...not to mention amazing? It's from a series of prints entitled "Le Bon Genre", originally published in France in 1817 (a second series came out in 1822 and a third in 1827) as an amusing look at life and entertainment among the fashionable classes in and around Paris. Note the little oil lamps on posts running down the sides--wherever this was, you could evidently ride it at night. I can't help wondering if a lot of ladies lost those wonderfully fluffy ostrich plumes off their hats--you may not be able to see it very well, but the lady half-way down the slide is reaching for hers with an alarmed look on her face. And I wonder if that little girl is about to say "Can we go again? Pleeeeease?" In French, of course.

So much for Six Flags, huh?