Category: Regency

Mad Dogs and Englishmen….

Updated on September 23, 2013 by Diane Gaston

This really has little to do with mad dogs and Englishmen, but bear with me. There is a sort of a connection.

Yesterday, the neighborhood cat came to our patio door to taunt and torture our cats and I did a foolish thing. I reached down to stop our “Devil Cat” from rushing the screen and he bit me! Good. His canine tooth sank into the skin of my palm right below my thumb. A couple of other teeth did less damage. I washed and soaked and slathered the wounds with antibiotic cream and bandaged them. Today I’ll call my doctor’s office. My hand hurts and I’m running a low grade fever but other than that, I’m not worried. My cat is current on his rabies shots and, being an indoor cat, he is never exposed to rabid animals anyway. And even if my cat had rabies, at least there is a (reputedly unpleasant) cure.

It certainly was not so in Regency England, though.

Rabies was described as early as 2300 B.C. in Babylonia. In 800-700 B.C. Homer describes Hector as being like a “raging dog.” Four hundred years later Aristotle describes dogs as suffering from a madness that is contagious and fatal to other animals who are bitten. As time goes on, rabies is mentioned all over Europe and Russia and first appears in the British Isles in 1026 A.D.

In the mid 1700s, a serious outbreak of rabies swept London. All dogs were ordered confined for one month and a reward of 2 shillings for killing dogs on the streets led to a carnage.

It wasn’t until 1804 that a German scientist demonstrated that rabies was transmitted through the saliva of mad animals, and finally in 1885 Louis Pasteur cured the first patient with his newly invented vaccine.

Nothing in the history of rabies mentioned rabid cats. Probably another way cats feel themselves superior to dogs.

I’ll let you know what happens at the doctor. Have you ever been bit by an animal? Tell us your story.

Posted in Anything but writing, Regency | Tagged cats, Louis Pasteur, mad dogs, rabies | 22 Replies

If my daughter had been born 200 years earlier…

Updated on September 20, 2013 by susanna

Last week Mr Fraser and I grounded our nine-year-old daughter, Miss Fraser, from all her electronic devices–her regular Kindle, her Fire, her DS, her computer, and the TV. She’s taking her electronics fast pretty hard. At one point I reminded her that when I was her age, I didn’t have any electronics except a TV which only got six or seven channels, two of them extremely fuzzy, and yet I entertained myself just fine with books, toys, and paper and pencils/crayons. All of which she has plenty of. “But you were used to it!” she wailed.

She’s adjusting. She’s been digging out toys she got for Christmas or her birthday that she’d barely touched, and she follows me around the kitchen wanting to help, but bored by the simplicity of my typical weeknight cuisine. While I’m just trying to get pasta or breakfast-for-dinner to the table, she’s trying to make it a round of Chopped or Iron Chef. Which might be fun–on a weekend when I have more time.

But it got me thinking what her childhood would’ve been like if she’d been born in 1804 instead of 2004. Setting aside for the moment the fact she’d probably be motherless (since I had complications of late pregnancy and labor and delivery that were no big deal in the 21st century but would’ve been dire back then), her world would look very different. She wouldn’t have My Little Pony figurines, she’d have an actual pony. (Assuming of course that Regency Mr Fraser and I were at least genteel and could afford to keep horses.)

Horsie!

(Yes, yes, I know, that’s a horse, not a pony. But isn’t it pretty? Horsie!)

She wouldn’t be able to read about Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, or Firestar the warrior cat, but she might enjoy Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. Or, given that we are Frasers (it’s a pen name, but one chosen from my family tree), she might find The Scottish Chiefs more to her taste than anything else available in 1813.

And while I suppose the Regency versions of me and Mr Fraser would’ve felt obliged to restrain our daughter’s tomboyish tendencies, I’m sure she would’ve angled for toy soldiers instead of dolls.

As much as I love history, the only thing I envy about Regency Miss Fraser’s childhood is the pony.

What about you? What are your favorite toys, or your kids’ favorites? And what would you have played with 200 years ago?

Posted in Frivolity, Regency | Tagged childhood, Susanna Fraser, toys | 9 Replies

Circulating Libraries and Beyond

Updated on September 9, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Aren’t we lucky that books are so available to us? Today we have so many choices. Hardback books, paperback books, ebooks. We can buy books online, in mega-bookstores, small independent bookstores, stores like Target and Walmart, even grocery stores. And we can borrow books from libraries.

The invention of the printing press paved the way for making books available to more than the rare few, but even three hundred years later, during the Regency, only the wealthy could afford to buy books. A book in three volumes could cost almost one hundred dollars in today’s dollars. Books were much more affordable when lent from the circulating libraries that abounded in every English city and village.

Some were as large and well-stocked as Hookham’s on Bond Street. Others, in villages, might consist of a couple shelves of books in a dry goods shop. Subscriptions could cost a guinea a year to borrow as many books as one wished at the more expensive libraries to a few pence per book at the smaller ones.

One thing was certain at the circulating libraries of all sizes. Novels were by far the most popular books borrowed.

It is true today, as well. The most popular category of books borrowed in libraries are novels.

Today libraries are struggling to meet the needs of our changing world, especially the changing world of publishing and the effects of the economic crisis. Budgets are being cut at the same time that new technologies are becoming more and more important.

One of the struggles involves the borrowing of ebooks. Instead of ebooks making books more accessible through libraries, the cost of ebooks, sometimes 150-500% above printed books, has made it more difficult for libraries to afford the numbers of books they might have stocked on bookshelves. In response The American Library Association has announced the launch of “Authors for Library Ebooks,” an initiative that asks authors to stand with libraries in their quest for equitable access to e-books. Kicking off the campaign are bestselling authors Cory Doctorow, Ursula K. Le Guin and Jodi Picoult. Authors can sign on to this initiative here.

The ALA has been talking to major publishers, distributors, authors and agents about solutions for library ebook lending, a solution that can be fair to everyone. I think it is so important that libraries survive to offer books to those who cannot afford them and that will include ebooks more and more as epublishing grows.

What do you think?

And….Our Elena Greene is interviewed at History Hoydens today. Let’s show her some Risky Regencies support!! (and hear more about Flying With A Rogue!)

This just in! Number One London is planning a Wellington Tour! Check it out!

Posted in Rant, Reading, Regency | Tagged American Library Association, Authors for Library Ebooks, Circulating Library, library | 6 Replies

A Lady’s Accomplishments

Updated on September 2, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

In Virginia, Labor Day is, by law, the day before school starts, so it seems fitting for me to discuss education, specifically the education of a Regency young lady.

Our heroes all have attended Eton or Harrow and on to Oxford or Cambridge, but what of our heroines? There really wasn’t parallel educational paths for women during the Regency. Daughters of the aristocracy were typically educated at home by governesses, like Jane Austen’s Emma, supplemented by music masters, drawing masters and dance masters, of course.

There were boarding schools, many of them in Bath. The better ones catered to the daughters of the ton, but daughters of gentry might attend such schools as well. Not all of these schools gave what we would consider a quality education. Later than the Regency (1840), Dorothea Beale describes:

…what miserable teaching we had in many subjects; history was learned by committing to memory little manuals; rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces of literature, we repeated week by week the ‘Lamentations of King Hezekiah’, the pretty but somewhat weak ‘Mother’s Picture’.

Being truly educated, a bluestocking, was not a desirable condition for a lady, though. Young ladies were expected to be accomplished, not educated. In Pride and Prejudice, Caroline Bingley gives us a list (Austen’s) of what this means:

A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word. Mr. Darcy adds, To all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.

They leave out needlework, both decorative and practical, another important component of a young lady’s education, as was letter-writing. Young ladies also learned French and Italian. In an ironic way, a young lady’s education could be more varied than a Regency gentleman’s. A Regency boy was expected to learn Latin and Greek and was confined to a Classical education. A young lady could read and study anything she liked. Jane Austen had the run of her father’s library. She never mentions Classical Literature in her books.

Has school started in your area yet? What are you doing for Labor Day?

Posted in Jane Austen, Regency | Tagged Dorothea Beale, education, Emma, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice | 11 Replies

Country House Visiting

Updated on August 31, 2013 by Myretta

With Napoleon rampaging around Europe, the grand tour was a little more problematic during our period. But country house visiting was quite the thing.

This wasn’t always to the taste of estate owners. In 1783, Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Thomas Mann

“I am tormented all day and every day by people that come to see my house, and have no enjoyment of it in summer. It would be even in vain to say that the plague was here. I remember such a report in London when I was a child ,and my uncle Lord Townshend, then secretary of state, was forced to send guards to keep off the crowd from the house in which the plague was said to be–they would go and see the plague. had I been master of the house, I should have said… “You see the plague! you are the plague.”

Poor Horace was so inundated with visitors to his extraordinary house-Strawberry hill, Richmond, that after he had been disturbed at dinner by the arrival of three Germans Barons who wished to visit his house, he eventually would only allow his housekeeper to admit people to his house if they could show her a signed ticket obtained from him in advance. Such was the demand for these visits that Walpole had tickets printed– he still signed them and inserted the date of the proposed visit — and went so far as to print “a page of rules for admission to see my House”:

“…..Mr Walpole is very ready to oblige any curious persons with the sight of his house and his collection…it is but reasonable that such persons as send, should comply with the rules he has been obliged to lay down for showing it.

No ticket will serve but on the day for which it is given.If more than four persons come with a ticket,the housekeeper has positive order to admit none of them….

Every ticket will admit the company only between the hours of twelve and three before dinner,and only one company will be admitted on the same day.

They that have tickets are desired not to bring children…”

Chatsworth was the first house to adopt the habit of reserving “open days” for tourists and as early as 1760 it was open only on two public days each week.

Derbyshire was a very popular destination — with the Peak district, Matlock, spas at Buxton, and houses such as Chatsworth, Haddon Hall and Kedelston.

Mrs. Garnett – Kedleston Hall

Mrs Garnett, who was the housekeeper at Kedelston, was famous for her guided tour. In her hand you can see a copy of Catalogue of Pictures, Statues, &c. at Kedleston, ready to put it into the hand of the next enquiring visitor. Such guidebooks had been produced at Kedleston since 1769, with subsequent editions revised to take account of the expanding art collection. It was an important means of recording the identities of the sitters in portraits, which were of greater interest to 18th-century visitors than matters of attribution or iconography. A consequence of not having such aids was recorded by Horace Walpole, who described how at Petworth the 6th Duke of Somerset refused to let his servants have new picture lists, “so that when he died, half the portraits were unknown by the family.”

Although it was by no means uncommon for house servants to act as guides, it was unusual for the housekeeper herself to be painted. That she was immortalized in this way perhaps indicates the respect and affection in which this long-serving and highly capable servant was held; indeed, she was given a gravestone describing her as “sincerely regretted.”

In 1777 she took Samuel Johnson and James Boswell around the house: “Our names were sent up, and a well-drest elderly housekeeper, a most distinct articulator, shewed us the house… We saw a good many fine pictures… There is a printed catalogue of them which the housekeeper put into my hand; I should like to view them at leisure.”

An excellent book on Country House visiting is Adrian Tinniswood’s The Polite Tourist.

Posted in Regency, Research | 8 Replies