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What a Beautiful Smile

September 21, 2016 January 24, 2023 Isobel Carr 7 Comments

When you write historicals, you often run up against a lot of misconceptions (both readers’ and your own). I’ve had the rant about “no, our characters weren’t shorter” fight more than once. So often in fact that I did a blog post about it several years back. I’ve also tried my best to demystify the history of kilts and clan tartans (to much grousing) and have tackled thorny and unpopular topics like pointing out that croquet is Victorian and the hymen is NOT located internally.

Skull by Pedro WEINGARTNER

Today I want to highlight a very interesting bit of historical archology that came to my attention recently: people used to have very straight teeth! It’s almost a gimmie that when you see a historical film or show the production will highlight the snaggly teeth of the characters that happen to be poor. But it turns out that’s anachronistic!

Janet Monge—curator of the physical anthropology section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—has studied a lot of skulls and she noticed something very interesting about them. To quote, “Nobody in the past had dental problems, like we are talking nobody.”

So what exactly got us to the point where we are now, where nearly everyone with a perfect smile had to invest a fortune in orthodontia to achieve it? Well, Monge has a theory… and it links like so many other negative physical developments to the industrial revolution. She says the change happened fast and it happened globally (the globally is a fly in the ointment in my opinion, as the industrial revolution didn’t hit across the globe all the same time), but her theory is still interesting. Her hypothesis is that it’s all down to bottle feeding! There’s a very verifiable difference between the development of the jaw an palate in babies that are breastfed and those that are bottle fed (bottles not requiring the same kind of sucking that breasts to in order to receive nourishment). So narrow faces with weaker jaws (but the same number of teeth) result in crowded and crooked smiles.

Silver Pap Boat

So, our characters would very likely have had beautiful, straight smiles, unless they were so unlucky as to have been “brought up by hand” and nursed on pap from a “bubby pot,’ “pap boat,” or “sucking bottle.” The snaggly teeth we all think of as a common thing pre-braces have really only been common for the past 150-200 years!

Bread Pudding: Regency Style

September 14, 2016 November 17, 2022 carolyn 7 Comments

I came across this recipe for bread pudding from 1815 and since I love bread pudding I decided to make it. Image of the recipe below. When I was in the kitchen about to make it I took a screen shot of my website blog post about finding the recipe because that was faster for reference.

The recipe text is included for people who don’t see the image or who are using a screen reader.

I did a post over at my blog where I posted the recipe.

Bread pudding

Take the crumb of a penny loaf, and pour on it a pint of good milk boiling hot, when it is cold, beat it very fine, with two ounces of butter and sugar to your palate, grate half a nutmeg in it, beat it up with four eggs, and put them in and beat altogether near half an hour, tie it in a cloth and boil it an hour, you may put in half a pound of currants for change, and pour over it white wine sauce.

To make a boiled bread pudding a second way.

Take the inside of a penny loaf, grate it fine, add it to two ounces of butter, take a pint and a half of milk, with a stick of cinnamon; boil it and pour it over the bread, and cover it close until it is cold, then take six eggs beat up very well with rose water, mix them all well together, sweet to your taste, and boil it one hour.

I figured it would be interesting to attempt this. I decided on the first way, no currants added.

My first hurdle was figuring out the size of a penny loaf. It turns out the size/weight of a penny loaf was dependent on the cost of wheat. I read a bunch and saw all the formulas and as near as I can tell a penny loaf had to weigh anywhere from 11 to 16 troy ounces. A troy ounce is 31.1034768 g (1.097142857143 ounces.) Some more googleing . . . .

Because I am awesome at math, I’ll just do some calculations and . . . 16 troy ounces is 17.554285714288 regular ounces. Ta Da!!!

I decided 16 ounces of bread was close enough. I bought a 16 oz baguette at the store.

The steps with lots of pictures:

I tore up the baguette into chunks then used a food processor to reduce to crumbs. I didn’t have time to wait for them to get stale enough so I dried out the crumbs in a 500 F oven until most of the moisture was gone. Not toasted though!

Above is the mixing bowl of crumbs, awaiting a transformation to something delicious.

Milk

At the store, I bought full fat milk (in a bottle!!!) not homogenized, that still had cream in it from one of the local amazing dairies. That would be more like what would have been on hand in the Regency.

I boiled the milk as directed. . . and mixed it into the bread crumbs. It was really dry. My doubts about this began in earnest. It wasn’t the texture I was expecting at all.

But OK! I put the milk and bread crumbs mixture in the freezer so it would come to room temperature quickly.

Cool

After that, I had my butter (unsalted) my nutmeg, sugar, and eggs ready to add.

Since it said Sugar To Taste, I’ll just say I added about 1 1/3 cups of sugar. If I were to make it again, I might reduce the sugar slightly.

I was worried about the amount of nutmeg as half a nutmeg grated was easily a tablespoon or more and that’s an aggressive amount of nutmeg.

Once I had the sugar and nutmeg added, I elected to add about a teaspoon of Fleur du Sel (fancy French salt) and about a teaspoon of cinnamon because I thought it seemed a little bland.

Nutmeg

The recipe calls for a lot of mixing time, up to 30 minutes after the all the ingredients are added. I mixed it on higher speeds for a long time. With a Kitchen-aid because this isn’t about my upper arm strength.

Eggs

As I was adding ingredients my doubts increased. It was an unattractive color, it was dense and sticky, and I was having regrets about the whole idea. Maybe my bread crumbs weren’t fine enough. Maybe I should have used a different bread. I don’t know.

Ingredients being mixed in mixer. It's something....

More mixing. . . .

On the Cloth

OK. Fine.

I poured and scraped the mixture onto the cloth, and it was like that blanc mange from Monty Python running around eating everything. I was sure it would rise up and attempt to eat innocent people.

Tied Up

I wrapped it up and used a lot of string to to tie it up. My nightmare was that the whole thing would come apart in the water. I feel I used an appropriate amount of string. I would NOT use less.

Boiling

Right. Boiling. In the water. For an hour, it said.

But after an hour it wasn’t appreciably cooked at all. So I trussed it up again and boiled it some more. And then I had an engagement so I put the water on simmer and left it for 3 hours. Maybe a deeper pot and more water, aggressively boiling? I don’t know. It just looked . . . so sad.

Boiled

Here is it boiled and boiled and boiled … But notice that my string work was excellent.

THe bread puudingin a glass bowl. It looks awful. It's just .... stuff

Cooked

I untrussed it and it was . . . omg. It kind of fell apart because I wasn’t expecting this…blob. And it was sticking to the cloth, too.

Ugly just isn’t the right word, but it will work. Plus it didn’t look much different than when it went in. I figured the whole thing was a complete loss.

And then I tasted it. Just in case. And it was actually really good. My son tried it and said. “I’d call that a win.” It was all gone the next morning, by the way.

A small serving in a green cup. Also not delicious looking. BUt it was.

Served

It wasn’t hard to make. It probably does need a sauce to hide how unappealing it looks.

An acquaintance told me later she makes hers in a mold and I can totally see doing that because then it’s a pretty shape.

There you have it. Bread pudding Regency style. It was delicious. But not more delicious as bread pudding baked in an oven. But still delicious. And all that nutmet? Absolutely the correct amount.

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New Research Books, or, Dicky Doyle Forever!

September 7, 2016 September 7, 2016 Sandra Schwab 4 Comments

As you know, one of my favorite 19-th century illustrators & PUNCH-men is Richard Doyle, who joined the staff of the magazine when he was just 19 years old, and who designed the iconic cover of PUNCH just a few months later. I still have very fond memories of that magical day I spent in the Victoria & Albert Museum, looking through Doyle’s sketchbooks. (YES!!!! I touched the original sketchbooks! The sketchbooks Doyle himself had touched!)

However, there is one kind of primary source related to Richard Doyle that has remained unpublished for many years and of which you can catch only occasional glimpses in books about Doyle: the illustrated letters he sent to his father in the early 1840s. These were part of the weekly challenge John Doyle set for his sons: in those letters they were to describe what they had seen and done that week. Doyle senior encouraged them to go to the theatre and attend other important cultural and political events in London.

A couple of weeks ago, I found out – quite by accident! – that for the first time ever there’s a scholarly edition of Richard Doyle’s illustrated letters (at this point, imagine me melting into a puddle of delight). So of course, I had to have that book. And, OH MY GOSH, those letters, they are wonderful! I haven’t yet had time to really delve into it, but even just browsing through it is a delight.

Doyle presents to the reader street scenes of London and also takes us into the Doyle home, where he shows us his brothers and himself hard at work at the next painting for their private Sunday exhibition. There are fantasy scenes with fairies and, of course, there plenty of little knights too – one of Doyle’s most favorite theme in those years and one that should later make his illustrations favorites with the PUNCH readership.

The letters are whimsical and charming. Take the one from 18 September 1842, which opens with,

My Dear Papa,

The Royal game of Golf (I am not sure that I have spelt it rightly, but it is to be hoped I have), as played upon Blackheath every Saturday by a portion of the sporting residents of the neighbourhood, presents to the unsophisticated eye as remarkable an aspect as one could reasonably expect to witness. Next to the brute force of man, a hurling stick and a ball are the chief agents in this delicious game.

By December 1843, Richard Doyle was working for PUNCH and the new job is taking up much of this time – to the extent that he fears he won’t be able to finish the “Christmas things” promised to friends and family. “On the next page,” he writes to his father on 17 December in the last letter of the collection,

you will find a representation of your son, precisely as he appeared at the moment when he gave up all hope, on Monday last, half past nine o’ clock p.m. […] The demon Punch perched upon the table, in exultation, points to the “Procession,” his “Christmas Piece.” Harlequin &c, as indicative of Christmas, weep over the little quantity of yours, a crowd of little urchins, in the foreground, by referring to the productions of former years, prove what can be done, and others in the back are plainly showing that it was not for want of paper.

As it turned out, Doyle would always find it difficult to meet deadlines (*cough* a little bit like myself…) – and it was never for want of paper!

In short, my new research book is a true delight, and I shall peruse it with much joy.

Georgiana at Chatsworth

September 5, 2016 January 24, 2023 Diane Gaston 2 Comments

Perhaps one of the most famous Duchesses of Devonshire is Georgiana Cavendish nee Spencer, wife of the 5th Duke. Georgiana was eclipsed, perhaps, only by Deborah Cavendish, the youngest of the famous Mitford sisters and whom I consider the savior of Chatsworth. Georgiana, however, was the subject of a best-selling biography by Amanda Foreman and was played by Keira Knightley in the movie based on the book, The Duchess.

When Kristine Hughes Patrone of Number One London Tours, and I spent three days at Chatsworth last May, Georgiana was featured prominently in one room, including the wonderful Gainsborough portrait (center) that had been lost for a while and only returned to Chatsworth in 1994.

To the right is an unfinished portrait of Georgiana by Joshua Reynolds. To the left is Elizabeth Foster, Georgiana’s friend and the Duke’s mistress. Elizabeth married the Duke after Georgiana’s death.

There was also this spectacular portrait by Maria Cosway of Georgiana as Cynthia from the Fairie Queen.

As we walked through the house I noticed another portrait amidst several on the stairway. I’d never seen this portrait before, even though I’d once searched online for as many portraits of Georgiana as I could find. I asked the docent and, sure enough, the portrait was of Georgiana, although he did not know the artist.

Georgiana was not only present in her portraits, but also in her gem collection. For a time, because of her affair with Earl Grey and her pregnancy by him, the Duke banished Georgiana to the Continent. During her banishment, she developed an interest in gems and became quite a collector. Here’s an example of one of her finds.

Georgiana, a celebrated beauty since her youth, lost her looks at age 39 when an illness of her eye left her scarred. Her health continued to decline and she died at age 48. She had been active in politics and other social causes; she published two novels, a memoir, and a poem. She also was an addicted gambler and hiding and confessing her losses which were over three million pounds in today’s money.

I’ve been intrigued by Georgiana since reading her biography–I even named my GPS after her!!

As much as I love Keira Knightley, to me, she was NOT Georgiana. Georgiana was voluptuous and warm and Keira is all angles and energy. What do you think? Who would have made a better Georgiana? Or did you like Keira Knightley as the Duchess? Do you have a favorite portrait of Georgiana? To me, it is hard to beat the Cosway portrait.

Risky Business? Revisiting & Revising a Backlist Book

September 2, 2016 January 24, 2023 Gail Eastwood 9 Comments

Revisiting an old story intent on revising it can be a scary journey full of rocks and potholes. I’m deep in the throes of revising my old Signet Regency, The Magnificent Marquess, and I have to tell you, the process isn’t pretty! It’s not just the mess of annotated pages scattered over my dining room table and all the handwritten notes that are keyed to them, but also my precarious state of mind.

What do you think about “new and improved” versions of older books? Have you ever picked up a new version of an old favorite and read it to see if you liked it better? And did you? If you write, have you gone back to previously published work and significantly changed it? I’m not talking about just a minor tweak or correction here or there. Were you pleased with the result? Please let me know in the comments!

While I am firmly convinced this original book can be greatly improved, I am also terrified I may make it worse rather than better.

There seem to be two schools of thought about reissuing backlist books. One is that old books are like old friends and should just be sent back out again in the same lovable form they originally presented to the world. The other is that reissuing them offers an opportunity to improve them –to fix mistakes, enliven the writing, or even indulge in the deeper surgeries (or expansions) required to improve plot, character, or motivations. What’s your experience with this, as a reader, or a writer, or both?

Most of my old Signets packed a lot of plot into a relatively short book format –the length was a requirement of the publisher’s line. I believe that by expanding The Magnificent Marquess, I can tell the story more effectively. Too much had to be left out of the original version. But one of many dangers then becomes losing the pacing, not to mention the challenge of keeping the writing tight. All the same problems of writing any original version!

I just keep reminding myself that even though these characters and their story are old friends of mine, for readers who never read the first version, this revised one will be brand new. I’ll let you know when it’s ready!!

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Bread pudding

To make a boiled bread pudding a second way.

The steps with lots of pictures:

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