elaby | Victorian snippets

www.victorianlondon.org is not only a great research site (yay primary sources!), it's also a pretty never-ending source of amusement. I thought I'd post a bunch of my favorite snippets here :D They're things that I either find particularly adorable, funny, or mind-boggling. I get such a kick out of the way things are put in the Victorian style of writing. I'm sure you'll see what I mean XD

These are all from www.victorianlondon.org, and there's something about the way the site is coded that I can't figure out how to link to specific articles. If there's anything you're particularly interested in, ask me and I'll tell you how to find it. The search feature on the left is also useful.

I love these, because it's so rare nowadays to hear (or read) guys actually express affection for each other. I could go into a long involved rant about how homophobia has forced people of the male persuasion to refrain from actually acting like they care about their also-male friends, but not being male, I don't feel like I have a very good perspective. Anyway, these make me squee much in the way Starsky and Hutch do when they talk about how they love each other. In a lot of the letters I read, they substituted dashes for some names and dates.

DEAR TOM,
I intend to be "turned off" next Tuesday week! Will you attend on the mournful occasion as "best man?"
Seriously, I am to be married to my charming little Ada on the ––, and I look for your presence at our bridal as the completion of my happiness, for then the man and woman I love best will unite in confirming my happiness.
Always yours,
––

DEAR JOHN,
Julia has consented to our marriage on the 15th inst., and I scribble a line to remind you of your promise to be "best man" on the occasion. Marriage is supposed sometimes to separate bachelor friendships, but such will not be the case in my instance, my dear fellow. Julia has a great regard for you, and is too sensible and good to interfere between us with petty jealousies.
I am awfully happy, Jack! Wish me joy, and
Believe me
Ever your true friend,
––

These are from The Lady's Dressing Room, by Baroness Staffe, translated from the French (I think) by Lady Colin Campbell, 1893. This advice manual is absolutely hilarious, from the extremely detailed description of what kind of brocade you must have on the sofa in your dressing room to what kind of decorative ribbon is acceptable depending on your income. The tone of these are so fascinating - sometimes it's like the author is trying to tell you how you must act, but has no idea how one accomplishes such things, so she uses cleverly vague wording like "This task is quite simple if you are careful" and leaves it at that.

Some medical advice:

If your ears are at all delicate, it is bad for the hearing to let your feet be cold. Beware of the damp for your extremities, and never sit with your back to an open window. Such imprudence will increase your infirmity.

Because the feet-ear connection has long been proven. Even aside from that, I love the last line; it has such a didactic feel.

If a live insect gets into your ear, do not be alarmed; the bitter wax will soon make it get out again. Besides, if you get a little warm water poured in the ear, the insect will be drowned, and will float to the surface, where it can be taken away with the fingers. A few puffs of tobacco-smoke, too, will stupefy this intruder into a place where he had no business to go.

Do not be alarmed? Are you kidding me? If a "live insect" (never mind a dead one) gets in my ear, I'm going to be alarmed, believe you me, no matter how little tobacco-smoke would get the thing out again. The last sentence is so whimsical. I swear I've read elsewhere an account of a maid getting a "blackbeetle" in her ear, and how they had to take her to the doctor. It must have been a common problem if they published advice about it alongside with things like how to keep your hands from getting chapped!

The Wellington boot is altogether unacceptable.

*giggles* All I can think of is Billy Connolly's "The Welly Boot Song," which is one of my favorite things ever. Apparently proper Victorian ladies could have nothing to do with Wellies (this could explain their high sickness rate).

The daily repetition of a foot-bath does not suit everybody. A foot-bath in which you keep your feet for ten or fifteen minutes is frequently injurious; above all, if it is taken very hot, or even warm. It has the bad effect of making the feet too tender, besides having a deplorable effect on the brain and sight if you are weak or delicate.

Again, the link between the health of your feet and that of the rest of your body! This time it's your sight and "the brain" rather than your hearing that will suffer if you mistreat your feet.

I have seen satin petticoats frayed and ragged, and others encrusted with mud, appear under superb gowns when these were held up. This is indeed ignoble.

It's the end-of-paragraph zingers that I love the most. This is in the section about how if your underclothes are dirty it's even worse than if your outer clothes are.

The whole corset question is gone over in great detail in this manual, and is extremely wishy-washy. It talks about how male detractors of the corset say it's unhealthy, it squishes your organs, it straightens women's natural curviness and inflicts long-term damage, etc., but it also goes on to say that corsets are absolutely necessary for a very stout woman and have the advantage that if the corset is only looked upon by woman as a support to her frail figure, it becomes useful. She will then have known how to give suppleness and elasticity enough to assure comfort as well as to allow of perfect liberty. It also serves as a support to the bust, the fibres of which would become distended; and it would soon fall too low if this kind of restraint did not keep it in its proper place. Saggy boobs are, for the Victorian lady, as unacceptable as Wellington boots, I see.

Advice on legs, and dressing them:

The moment you perceive that a little child's legs are inclined to be crooked, take care not to allow him to walk. Leave him to himself on the carpet, where he can roll about as he likes, and the little legs will soon get straight again.

Just on their own? I admit I'm not an expert on this, but I'm inclined to doubt that a problem of this sort will take care of itself if left alone "on the carpet".

To avoid varicose veins, men should fasten the ends of their drawers so as not to make a ligature round their legs, and women should take care not to garter too tightly.

This book is obviously aimed at women, and rarely mentions men except in how to treat them... which is a problem when you're trying to research for a story with an almost exclusively male cast. So, I ask you, my knowledgeable f'list - what on earth were men's underclothes like in the Victorian era? From this, I assume men wore drawers that were long enough that the cuffs were drawn snug somewhere above their knees, but it's hard to tell. This is a very important question when you're writing slash, and I'm sure some of you will be able to elucidate me XD

In America the garters do not match; a pair is composed of one yellow and the other black, or one yellow and the other blue, etc. One of the two is always yellow. It is said that this brings good luck. I do not know whether the yellow should be worn on the right leg or on the left. This dissimilarity is very ugly, and it is necessary to have a great deal of faith in the talismanic virtue of this yellow garter to commit knowingly this fault of taste.

*cracks up* Those crazy superstitious Americans! The last sentence, again, is just hilarious in its tone.

The section on how to wear your garter bears repeating in full:

Everyone cannot bear a garter as tight as it should be. Their legs swell under pressure, and varicose veins form. In this case the stockings should be fastened to the stays by ribbons (suspenders). But accidents might happen ; for if the ribbon, which must be well stretched to hold up the stocking, were to break, down comes the stocking over the heel! What a catastrophe! My advice is to wear at the same time a garter not at all tight, but sufficiently so to hold up the stocking, in case of accidents, until the damage can be repaired.

To wear the garter below the knee is against all rules of taste. The shape of the calf is compromised thereby, and deprived of the natural grace of its outline, which is thus voluntarily spoilt.

But, after all, it would be difficult to find any but an old peasant-woman who would wear her garter below the knee, and she only because the shortness of her stocking will not allow of anything else.

All women who wear long stockings have for some time been in the habit of gartering them above the knee; and it is only in out-of-the-way country parts that to do this, cords, tapes, and bits of string are sometimes used. The most humble servant-maid who is a little civilised buys elastic garters with buckles. Before ten years are over, the abusers of the garter of whom we have been speaking will, let us hope, have disappeared.

Heaven save us from ladies who wear their garters below the knee, or who use something besides elastic and buckles to hold them up!

Victorian advice for doing laundry fascinates me for some reason (god knows the modern equivalent doesn't).

For

caitirin and my other crafty friends:

Knitted and crocheted garments should be washed as follows: Cut up a pound of soap into small pieces, and melt it till it is as thin as jelly; when cold, beat it with your hand, and add three spoonfuls of grated hartshorn. Wash the things in this liquid, and rinse them well in cold water.

Plunge them into salt-and-water to fix the colour, if they are coloured. Put them in a bundle before the fire, and shake them frequently to dry them; never spread them out for this purpose.

The next advice book I delved into was Cassell's Household Guide, which is four volumes of just about everything you could ever want to know, from how to manage your household expenses to first aid to training dogs. I found the link for this one, actually! Cassell's Household Guide. Particularly interesting (and useful for both Watson fic and my own Victorian characters, one of whom is a medical student) are the "Domestic Medicine" sections, which these next excerpts come from.

The chances of your clothes catching on fire must have been exponentially higher in the Victorian era, because this danger is discussed in great detail. It's interesting here that this is the only place where the pronouns are always "she" and not "he".

The slightest form of burn, viz., a superficial burn or scorch, merely reddening without destroying the skin, maybe produced by a slight explosion of gas, or the ignition of some article of clothing, which has been rapidly extinguished.
[...]
Severe burns, such as arise from the clothes taking fire - crinoline accidents, as they used to be called - are very serious, both as regards the life of the patient, and her future comfort, should she survive.
[...]
...a warm bath is at once the most soothing and appropriate treatment, since the warm water (the temperature of which must be carefully maintained at 90º) soaks off all the charred clothing, &c., and leaves the burns in the most healthy condition for dressing.

Ow O_o This must have happened with alarming regularity for there to be such advice as how to separate scorched clothing from skin. Eeugh.

With the best care, burns are, undoubtedly, very fatal accidents, and, as prevention is better than cure, it may not be out of place to urge the necessity for wire fire-guards over all fire-places to which children or females have access. Men, from the nature of their clothing, are much less liable to burns than women, unless, indeed, they indulge in the pernicious practice of "reading in bed" by candle-light.

Never read in bed by candle-light! You know what they say happened to Mr. Rochester, after all. What do you mean it was his secret crazy wife?

How to rescue someone when their clothes are on fire (note the pronouns):

If the sufferer has presence of mind enough to throw herself on the ground and roll over and over until the by-standers can envelop her with some thick and non-inflammable covering, her chances of escape from serious injury will be much increased; but, unfortunately, the terror of the moment ordinarily overcomes every other feeling, and the sufferer rushes into the open air- the very worst thing she could do.

The way these things are written, the word choice, makes them sound more like sensation novels than advice manuals. I think that's why I like them XD

More rescuing:

The first thing for a by-stander to do is to provide himself with some non-inflammable article with which to envelop the patient, and a coat or cloak - or, better, a table-cloth or drugget - will answer the purpose. Throwing this around the sufferer, he should, if possible, lay her on the ground and then rapidly cover over and beat out all the fire, keeping on the covering until every spark is extinguished. To attempt to extinguish fire by water is useless, unless the whole body of flame can be put out at one blow; and for one lightly-clad female to attempt to succour another, when other persons are at hand, is simply to imperil two lives instead of one.

Women should not attempt to help! Leave it to the men, ladies! And apparently to heavily-clad women, if there are any about.

And now we get to the section on "suspended animation," by which I think they meant what to do when someone gets knocked out or faints. The author's sympathy is overwhelming here.

If, as sometimes happens, a fainting-fit is only the prelude to a fit of hysterics, the patient should be thoroughly roused by the free application of cold water, so soon as the hysterical sobbings begin to show themselves, and a brisk walk up and down the room, between two not too sympathising friends, will then probably avert a domestic catastrophe which is always annoying to all concerned.

Annoying. Oh, I'm sure it's annoying to the hysterical person, too e_e and, of course, only women ever get hysterical. That's why there's a hyster- in it.

Now, some advice for instances when things get shoved where they're not supposed to go. *giggles* Kids never change, obviously.

Foreign bodies are often introduced by children into the noseor ear,in sport, and are generally of a more or less globular form, such as beads, pebbles, cherry-stones, or beans. These, if near the orifice, may be readily hooked out with one of the common ear-picks found in ladies' dressing-cases, or with the loop of a common hair-pin but if more deeply placed, injudicious poking with instruments may do harm...

And some MORE advice for if a bug gets in your ear...

The vulgar notion that "earwigs" have a tendency to find their way into the ear, is a popular delusion, but as it occasionally happens that an ant or other small insect enters the ear, and gives rise to pain and irritation, it may be well to mention that the simplest way of relieving the sufferer is to place the head horizontally and to fill the ear with water, when the insect will be at once floated out of the cavity.

Geh, the idea of this freaks me the heck out. At least this one doesn't tell people not to be alarmed!

Foreign bodies seldom lodge in the gullet [...] The most serious obstruction is a set of false teeth, since the plate upon which they are fixed is apt to become entangled in the mucous membrane, and necessitate a serious surgical operation.

O_O I can't imagine how a set of false teeth could even fit down somebody's throat, unless they mean pieces or individual false teeth.

That's all I've gotten through so far. There may be more of these posts XD

Current Mood: curious

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From:

kcscribbler

*is limp from cackling hysterically* O.my.WORD.
*more giggles*

Reading in bed by candlelight is pernicious, yes. *sporfle* And all the random instructions crack me up to no end too, so thank you for sorting and posting the best of the best. ^_^

And I love those letters at the beginning!! I agree, that in this day and age it's a shame some men have to feel like they can't even shake hands with another man without being accused of a preference that frankly shouldn't be anyone's business in the first place. Love the letters especially. :D

And on that happy note, I thank you once again and go crash into mah bed. :)

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Fifty-Seven Academics Just Punched the Air

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