New buck-skin breeches

Loretta reports:

By the 19th century, wearers of the plush breeches referred to in my last blog tended to be, as I indicated, servants, public and private. A comment from Michelle Buonfiglio of Romance B(u)y theBook reminded me that of the private servants who wore livery (and breeches), the most glamorous were footmen.

They were, generally, hired for their looks. They ought to be tall and good-looking, and of course their snug breeches and stockings must show off well-muscled legs. Mrs. Beeton wrote, “When a lady of fashion chooses her footman without any other consideration than his height, shape, and tournure of his calf, it is not surprising that she should find a domestic who . . . considers the figure he cuts behind her carriage and the late hours he is compelled to keep a full compensations for the wages he exacts, for the food he wastes, and for the perquisites he can lay his hand on.”

One perquisite might be one of the ladies of the house. Or--as in the case of the heroine of John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, the boss’s mistress.

Fanny Hill, annoyed with her lover, Mr. H--, (who's paying the bills) turns her attention to the young manservant Mr. H-- has just hired: “a very handsome young lad, scarce turn’d of nineteen, fresh as a rose, well shap’d , and clever-limb’d; in short a very good excuse for any woman’s liking.”

She takes careful note of his livery and how well it becomes him: “new buck-skin breeches, that clipping close,* shew’d the shape of a plump,”** well-made thigh, white stockings, garter-laced livery, shoulder-knot . . .”

Fanny, like Mae West, could resist everything but temptation.

*fitting snug
**muscle-ly

Flea Market Find

Susan reports:

One of the questions that writers are always asked is "Where do you get your ideas?" For the TNHG, this is easy to answer. Where history lies, so do our ideas, scattered so thick that sometimes we have to watch where we walk.

Which is not to say that our inspiration comes only from the mustiest of tomes, or even in museums or via the internet. Sometimes it appears in far more humble places, like a flea market.

Last month at the weekly flea market in Sandwich, MA, I was poking about the boxes on the grass, hunting through the cheapie jewelery. I have a weakness for gaudy Bakelite bangles, and One never knows what One might find. As I looked, a vendor dropped another box beside the cartons of jools, a large flat box filled with...feathers.

It was a sales rep's sample box from the first decade or so of the 20th century. I suppose it was meant to entice milliners, for the feathers had all been fashioned into little cockades and curled bunches and pretend roses. Sadly, most had disintegrated over time, rootless quills and barbs and drifting scraps of down. But what amazed me was how, a hundred years later, the ones that survived still wore their original tags, pinked edges and gold borders pinned in place and waiting to be filled out with a customer's order.

I looked, and touched, and thought of who might have sold them, who might have bought them, and what circuitous circumstances had brought them to my feet in the grass. Why hadn't the samples ever been used? What had become of the rep? Had he (or she) quit the business, eloped, won the Irish Sweepstakes, or been run over by a horse-drawn streetcar? Or had the box been bought by a single milliner who intended them for hats she'd never made? Oh, Dear Readers, the melancholy shades of doomed Lilly Bart!

"I'll make a deal for the whole box, if you want it," the vendor said. "End of summer, y'know."

The whole box was somehow too much. I took only one, this beautiful curling black feather, with two more at the base. Cost me a dollar.

But you can't put a price on what I got with it.

Department of Clarification: Plush shorts and cottons

Loretta reports:

From this society, little Mr. Perker detached himself, on his clerk being announced in a whisper; and repairing to the dining-room, there found Mr. Lowten and Job Trotter looking very dim and shadowy by the light of a kitchen candle, which the gentleman who condescended to appear in plush shorts and cottons for a quarterly stipend, had, with a becoming contempt for the clerk and all things appertaining to 'the office,' placed upon the table.

Being a Nerdy History Girl, I didn’t just shrug and keep reading. I wondered who the contemptuous individual was and what he was wearing. I noted the phrase--incorrectly-- as “plush shorts and stockings.” Then I stuck it in a blog, and aroused the curiosity of one of our Gentle Readers.

Being a NHG, I had to put on my deerstalker’s cap, take out my magnifying glass, and heft the Oxford English Dictionary onto my desk. Here's the result of my detective efforts:

“Shorts” in this case must mean “knee-breeches, small-clothes.”
“Plush” meant the same then as now. The breeches would be plush silk or cotton.
The “and cottons”? Trickier. It could mean flannel (stockings or waistcoat?). But after studying various definitions, I’m gambling on a type of coarse or nappy wool fabric known as “Manchester cottons.”

Since this episode dealt with legal matters, I started out thinking the gentleman was connected to the law courts. There were law messengers called beadles, who wore plush breeches. But the “contempt for the clerk and all things appertaining to ‘the office’" led me to believe this was a footman (technically, not a gentleman), dressed in livery that included plush knee-breeches and perhaps a coarse or nappy wool coat. ???

I wish Norton would make a Critical Edition of The Pickwick Papers, to stop NHGs driving themselves crazy. Meanwhile, if anyone's solved the mystery, please enlighten us.

Department of Quotation #2

Susan reports:


Battling quotes from London, 1673. In this corner:

Hannah Woolley (shown, left, from the frontispiece), author of The Gentlewoman's Companion; or, a Guide to the Female Sex:

"The right Education of the Female Sex, as it is in a manner every where neglected, so it ought to be generally lamented. Most in this depraved later Age think a Woman learned and wife enough if she can distinguish her Husband’s Bed from another’s. . . .Vain Man is apt to think we were merely intended for the World’s propagation, and to keep its human inhabitants sweet and clean; but, by their leave, had we the same Literature, he would find our brains as fruitful as our bodies."

Aaaand in this corner. . . .

Here's what Mrs. Woolley was up against –– an opinion from her (male) contemporary, the much-respected diarist/horticulturalist John Evelyn (shown right):

"Women were not born to read Authors and censure the learned. . . . All time borrowed from Family duties is misspent. The care of Children’s education, observing a Husband’s commands, assisting the sick, relieving the poore and being serviceable to our friends, are of sufficient weight to employ the most improved capacities among them."

Department of Quotation

Loretta reports:


London 1828

March 11th

“A hideous misfortune! The operation of dyeing my hair has fared so badly, the devil knows why, that this evening I had to begin all over again. Great and small misfortunes alternate with each other in such a pleasing way that I cannot become bored. But the reign of the devil cannot last forever, and if care has turned my hair white before its time, art must make it black once more, and so care will turn to joy.”

Prince Pückler-Muskau, Puckler’s Progress

Minuet Shoes

Susan reports:

Adding my two cents (or is it two steps?) into Loretta’s minuet discussion. . . .

As Loretta said, we were fortunate enough to attend a “ball” at the Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg during our visit last fall. We also spoke with one of the authorities on 18^th century dance, too, who not only answered all our Nerdy Girl questions, but demonstrated the various steps and dances as well. No, she didn’t wear John Travolta’s patent-leather platform oxfords, but she did dance in a beautiful replica pair of brocade shoes. Those are her feet, above left, after we asked her to raise her petticoats indelicately for our cameras.

Also, Vanessa mentioned reading about Beau Nash dancing a minuet with his partner while everyone else watched. This was quite true, alarming though it seems to the klutzs among us. A formal ball opened with a minuet, danced by the highest ranking lady and gentleman present. It was a showy, complicated dance with no place to hide, which explains why practice and instruction from dancing masters was so important. Who wants to screw up that publicly? There's good reason that minuets were danced at the beginning of the evening before the “strong waters” started flowing and clumsiness followed.

Unable to follow Loretta’s minuet chart from yesterday? Here’s an excellent video of a most accomplished couple in period dress, and though they’re performing before a group of tourists in an art museum, their talent show why the minuet was such a popular display of grace and refinement.

And also why most people at a ball couldn’t wait for the cheerful, forgiving mayhem of the country dances to begin later in the evening (such as the ball sketched by William Hogarth, right, in 1744.)

Dance? In these shoes?

Loretta reports:

Speaking of platform shoes, how about disco?

The 18th and 19th centuries had their version of disco--and I think that might fit better than the term ballroom dancing. Yes, they danced in ballrooms. But, as Susan & I discovered at Colonial Williamsburg, they also danced wherever and whenever they could get someone to make music (a single flute was sufficient) and a group of people to step in time to the music. What makes it more like disco, I think, is that the man didn’t hold the woman around the waist. They barely held each other. They touched hands. For some moves, they hooked arms do-si-do style.

This is a chart of minuet dance steps. Here's the whole book.

Our ancestors made do with a single flute or a pianoforte. With disco, a record or tape player was sufficient. But everybody dressed up for dancing. Men showed off their grace and elegance. And so I thought of Fred Astaire, naturally, but also John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.


Styles change, but we can always appreciate a man who moves with grace.