Writers in London in the 1890s

Portrait by James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Lady Meux typifies the type of 1890s woman I adore most of all. She was eccentric, incredibly wealthy, and had such a shifty past that "respectable" people wouldn't talk to her, but the Prince of Wales was happy to party with her at her house. When she had her portrait done, she hired James Whistler. What I don't like about her, or any of the figures that I've uncovered from this period so far, is the inclination to horde the artifacts that England was pillaging from other parts of the world, like the Americas, but especially Egypt.

"When an artifact is stolen, it is separated from the archaeological and historical context that is an essential aspect of its value. The looting of Egypt's antiquities dates back to ancient times--there are now more standing obelisks in Rome than there are in Egypt."Source

Today, I started stumbling upon books about the collection of Egyptian antiquities that Lady Meux kept at Theobalds House. You can see one for free on archive.org. The book pays careful attention to symbolism, translation, and funeral practices because Lady Meux kept the physical remains of ancient Egyptians and their coffins at her house.

From Kurna; Coffin of An-Heru; XIth Dynasty, about 2600.

Coffin of an Unnamed Priest of Amen-Ra, with
Mythological Scenes and Explanatory Inscriptions.

Qebhsennuf, Tuamutef, Hapi, and Mestha;from Thebes;
Set of Canopic Jars; XVIIIth Dynasty, about B.C. 1550.

Lady Meux's collection was so extensive that the legendary Egyptologist Wallis Budge only managed to catalogue part of it, some 1,700 parts, and he dedicated The Book of Paradise to her.

When she died, she tried to will the collection to the British Museum, but they declined and it was sold off instead. During her lifetime, Egyptians made it known to the English that many of the things their archeologists were taking were valuable to them. In Lady Meux's defence, when she learned that five of her Ethiopic manuscripts were missed by Ethiopians, she left them in her will to Emperor Menelik.

I do not know what the legal status the items from Lady Meux's collection, but I do know that the permission of the Egyptian government has been required for all archaeological excavations since 1869. Illegally excavated antiquities are also to be considered Egypt's national property. And Oscar Wilde's father reportedly bragged about having personally acquired his antiquities "before all the archeology started."

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In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996), the protagonist lives on a paper street, but did you know that paper streets have actually been used as cartographical traps to catch plagiarism? Gizmodo shared an excellent article on this today, outlining the ways in which some of these "trap streets" and imaginary places have actually lead to the creation of real places in the locations where they were mapped to catch intellectually lazy cartographers. I loved this idea and had to find out more about it.

"Trap streets" differ from "paper streets" in that they are deliberate misrepresentations. "Paper streets" and "paper towns" are imagined streets that someone actually plans on creating, irregardless of whether they will ever be constructed. Paper streets and towns are what developers lay out, after purchasing the land, but as we all know, sometimes those plans can fall through and cartographers have been known to include the still imaginary places on maps as traps for other cartographers.

Trap streets are a fascinating, but ultimately pointless, trade secret. Cartographers almost universally deny using them. Although the practice started to deter copyright infringement, trap streets are not copyrightable because "the existence, or non-existence, of a road is a non-copyrightable fact." Yet, the practice is only just beginning to die out.

Map aficionados treat the fake places that only exist on maps as Copyright Easter Eggs. Now that we've entered the era of digital imaging and mapping, these fake places are quickly being weeded out. Perhaps, the most famous example of this is Moat Lane.

Moat Lane in Finchley, North London was only recently removed from Google Maps, after first appearing in the TeleAtlas directory, a primary reference for Google Maps. Satellite view revealed treed yards and a house where the street was supposed to be.

This is Google's Street View of the place Moat Lane supposedly was.

Illustrating the ubiquitous and democratic nature of the digital world, TeleAtlas is now a subsidiary of the GPS mapping company TomTom. Mapping errors go through a system called Tele Atlas Map Insight, which enables users to improve the maps by reporting and correcting errors bypassing the customer and technical support teams of the manufacturers that use TeleAtlas maps.

More accurate maps are undoubtedly important, but these systems for correcting them illustrate the poverty of digital archives in the modern world. Trap streets are rapidly disappearing from the maps we use everyday without a trace. The corrections are leaving little to no record of how initial "errors" occurred, or why the corrections were made. The need to alter the written records of the past was a testament to the authenticity of archives, leaving a literal paper trail for historians. Digital archives leave no such paper trail. After all, who wants to leave behind a record of their mistakes?

Here's a link to another great article on this subject.

Who isn't occasionally inspired by Humans of New York? Since I've taken a little break from writing recently and been playing with Photoshop, I thought I would share what I've come up with.

These are writers in London in the 1890s (if they had Facebook and someone got inspired by Humans of New York).

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"Blonde and Brunette" by Charles Burton Barber

It's popular to trace the rise of the pug cult to when the British found pugs in the Chinese Imperial Palace during their invasion of China in 1860 and brought them back to England, where black pugs, in particular were made popular by someone called Lady Brassey. "Lady Brassey" probably refers to the travel writer and Baroness, Anna Brassey, who died in 1887. Though it is said she presented a black pug at the Maidstone show in 1886, just a year before her death.

Soon after Brassey made them cool, Queen Victoria became fond of the breed. She had several and it was through her involvement in breeding pugs that the Kennel Club was established in 1873. It was, consequently, a pug who won the first best in show of the Westminster Kennel Club in 1877.

Dog fancying is linked to the Victorian cult of domesticity, supported by the Queen, who commissioned a painter, specifically Charles Burton Barber, to capture her beautiful dogs (and others) on canvas.

"A Monster" by Charles Burton Barber

According to one blogger, other artists followed suit with amazing results:

I've been wearing mostly jeans, and one blazer has already had a few threads pulled since I got my own little brindle pug a few weeks ago, so I am astonished at that dress. All of the pictures above depict scenes of feminine domestic bliss in the typical Victorian fashion: women and children in household settings with their pets. But, as with everything in the nineteenth century, nothing was as simple as it seemed.

Before Victorian England embraced them, pugs were part of a very masculine culture in continental Europe and this is where it gets really weird.

The Mops-Orden (German for the "Order of the Pug" was a Catholic para-Masonic society that was supposedly founded by Klemens August of Bavaria in 1740 to bypass a papal bull. To the Order of the Pug, the pug represented loyalty, trustworthiness and steadiness, whereas now they are known primarily for their flat faces and love of cheese. Those who belonged to the Order of the Pug were called Mops (Pugs). New members underwent an initiation process that involved wearing a dog collar and behaving, in various ways, like a dog: scratching at the door to get in and kissing a porcelain pug's bum.

The secrets of the Order of the Pug were exposed in Amsterdam in 1745, but it took three years for anyone to ban them (maybe it took that long for them to take it seriously). However, it is rumoured that the Order was active until 1902.

A Pug by Carl Reichert (1836-1918)

Before the British Invasion in 1860, pugs were imported to the European continent by the Dutch East India Company. The dogs have a long history in China and are considered one of the oldest and most loyal breeds, housed only in Tibetan Monasteries and by members of the Chinese Imperial household.

Aside from Queen Victoria's pugs, Minka, Venus, Rooney, Olga, Fatima and Pedro, the most famous pug in European history is probably a little guy, called "Pompey," who, contrary to Monty Python lore, expected the Spanish Inquisition and alerted his master the Prince of Orange William the Silent to their arrival in 1572, thereby saving his life.

So while it is popular to trace the pug cult back to Queen Victoria and Lady Brassey, it has most certainly been around a lot longer than that!

Queen Victoria and one of her pugs.

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Nowadays, when you mention the long beard trend, most people immediately think of hipsters; I still think of the Victorians. With the news this week that these hipster beards harbour the kind of bacteria found in fecal matter, I rolled my eyes and thought about other problems the Victorians had with poop.

Essentially, overpopulation in the City of London caused the Times to speculate in 1894 that by 1950 the horse poop in the streets would be nine feet deep. It was the full-time occupation of the city's block boys to keep the streets free of manure. If you are worried about your beard filling up with poo as you go about your business today, imagine how crappy Bram Stoker's beard was!

Although Stoker took a bath every night before bed, the Victorians aren't remembered for their excellent hygiene, or medical care. Although they weren't known for their especially long life spans, walking around with poop all over their faces isn't what was killing them.

Before you throw hygiene to the wind and embrace the notion of getting poop on your face, remember that a basic understanding of science may be lacking in populations that resist learning about evolution (namely much of the Southern United States and people in the nineteenth century). It wasn't actual poop that they found in the beards of men in Albuquerque, it was the kind of bacteria found in the stomach and in poop. If you don't have enough, or the right kinds of these bacteria, you may develop Ulcerative colitis and other gastrointestinal conditions, which are sometimes even treated with a fecal transplant (they take the poop bacteria from the tummy of a healthy person and put it into the tummy of a sick person).

If you are a hipster, be like Stoker. Enjoy your beard, but wash it often. Irregardless of whether you have a beard, no one is going to want to kiss you if you don't take a bath.

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Charlotte Matilda Blake Thornley Stoker

I was going to write a blog post today about the mothers of writers in London in the 1890s, but I found this passage in Barbara Belford's biography of Bram Stoker that I think says it all. To me, this passage shows that, when things are looking down, when you are faced with criticisms and your endeavours are not as successful as you hope, mothers often know best.

Stoker borrowed money to publish Dracula, which didn't make him much money (in his lifetime) and got pretty dismal reviews - even from his friends.

Fortunately authors have mothers. "My dear, it is splendid," gushed Charlotte Stoker, "a thousand miles beyond anything you have written before, and I feel certain will place you very high in the writers of the day - the story and style being deeply sensational, exciting and interesting." To his mother, Stoker had surpassed all competitors. "No book since Mrs Shelley's 'Frankenstein' or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror - Poe is nowhere," she wrote. "I have read much but I never met a book like it at all. In its terrible excitement it should make a widespread reputation and much money for you." Unfortunately it did neither during Stoker's lifetime. If Dracula had been published in 1818 at the same time as Frankenstein, instead of at the height of literary realism and naturalism, it would have been a Romantic milestone. Source

Thank you for always being so supportive of me, mom. We writers need moms like you.

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Known for his wit, many of Oscar Wilde's insults are too convoluted to throw out during an argument, but these one-liners have got you covered!

Good novelists are much rarer than good sons (On a New Book on Dickens). This is number one because, whether you are a novelist, a son, or both, this is mean.
Like most artificial people he had a love of nature(Pen, Pencil, and Poison). It is far more genuine to admit that you hate camping, then go to the movies instead.
Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly (An Ideal Husband). I love that one for what it says about those who bought the first iPod, or iPhone, and how proud I was to own the first Sony discman.
There is no reason why a man should show his life to the world. The world does not understand things (De Profundis). I almost left this out because it seems to insult the world. In context it is about the love that dare not speak its name and the reason Oscar Wilde went to prison, but it is true of many people who tweet, or instagram every moment of their day. Someone once beautifully called such behaviour remembering the present. Yet, Twitter and Instagram are full of haters and looking for validation that way is idiotic.
Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong (Lady Windermere's Fan). It's funny if you know that sensation or hearing the words you want to hear and realizing not only how stupid those words sound, but also how stupid you were for wanting to hear them.
I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result (The importance of Being Earnest). Reminds me of a guy I dated once who spent ages adjusting the way his t-shirt fell around the waistband of his jeans.
Books of poetry by young writers are usually promissory notes that are never met (On Yeats''The Wandering of Oisin'). This one just gives me the biggest Lily Allen smile.
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner (The Picture of Dorian Gray). Sometimes people really do seem to seek applause, when they are asking for forgiveness.
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue (The Picture of Dorian Gray). I would do well to remember this when perusing reader comments on the internet.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike (An Ideal Husband). I find few things less attractive than people who condemn the lives of other people.

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"The Crush," by Charles Dana Gibson.

Perfection in humans is inarguably subjective, but as I've written a post on the perfect man of the 1890s, it has been pointed out to me that I ought to write one about the perfect woman.

Minerva

I want to write about a female bodybuilder because Eugene Sandow, the bodybuilder, was the perfect man in the 1890s, and I support gender equality, and there were female bodybuilders - even before Sandow began promoting bodybuilding for health and beauty. One of these was America's first famous strong woman, Josie Wohlford, or 'Minerva,' as she was called. Minerva held the Guinness Book World Record for the greatest weight lifted by a woman (18 men on a platform totalling over 3,000 lbs). I want to write about Katie Brumbach the same way, but the female bodybuilders of the 1890s didn't represent an ideal the way that Sandow did.

Katie Sandwina

In the Sandow ideal, form followed function. On the stage, Brumbach performed feats of strength as Katie Sandwina the feminine giantess, but feats of physical strength were not the feminine ideal in the 1890s, an era that would give rise to the Gibson girl in the United States and Lily Langtry in the UK.

[The Gibson girl's] image was unlike those of American woman that had appeared in the nineteenth century. Physically, she looked different. She was tall, with an incredibly tiny waist. She wore her hair swept up into a softly twisted bun called a chignon, revealing her long swanlike neck. What distinguished her more than any physical characteristics, however, was her attitude. [...] The lift of the Gibson girl's chin and her half closed eyes [...] suggested that she was more aloof than nurturing. Some thought her sophisticated. Others thought her haughty or conceited. She didn't stay at home, either. The images placed her on a golf course or on the beach. The media quickly labeled her "the typical American girl."

Gibson girl, 1899.

An invention of the 1890s, the Gibson girl's popularity continued to grow in the early twentieth century. Possessing similar attributes, Langtry was "introduced" in the 1877 and grew in popularity through to the 1890s.

Lily Langtry

An American in London, Langtry was literally introduced at one of Lady Sebright's evenings at home in May 1877. Her social performance there attracted comment, as well as invitations to other events with other important social figures. She had married well enough that she didn't need to work, but her great social success and personal interest in London Society led to an acting career and affairs with noblemen, including the Prince of Wales. Langtry's story encapsulates feminine ideals of the era in that her looks, and her ability to enchant were her keys to success.

Still, it wouldn't do to call Langtry the perfect woman, the way that Sandow was called the perfect man. She did after all, attract gossip by cheating on her husband. The perfect woman of the 1890s was an impossible ideal, one that I think is captured beautifully as George W.E. Russell recalls his friend, Mrs Lowther.

She possessed what men arrogantly call a "masculine understanding," trained into accuracy and thoroughness by the systematic studies of her girlhood. She could direct, organize, and control on the largest scale and in the smallest details. She was competent to deal with the toughest and most intricate problems of business, money, and, if need were, law. She could discuss, on equal terms and at a moment's notice, policies with Premiers, and Fiscal Reform with Chancellors of the Exchequer; Laws of Evidence with Judges, and Education Bills with Bishops. Yet she "bore this load of learning lightly as a flower," and could turn in an instant from the most strenuous themes to the graces and amenities, even the trivialities, of social life. Her enjoyment of that life was keen, and, in whatever phase she found herself, her talents and accomplishments were ready for the occasion.

She was, as most people know, a genuine artist; being very quick to catch an effective point, bold and rapid in execution, accurate in draughtsmanship, and endowed with that rare gift in English art - a true sense for colour. No one but an artist could have arranged the interior decoration of Lowther Lodge, where colour and form are so harmoniously combined. As to music, one who is well qualified to judge says, "She was very musical, and played the piano quite beautifully. She used to have lessons from Chopin, and up to the end remembered by heart pieces she had learnt with him, and played them very often when we were alone." Her waltzing was renowned for lightness and grace; and her familiarity with all minor accomplishments, such as painting on china, wood-carving, and embroidery, was remarkable. Nothing came amiss to her, and no one, I should think, ever spent so few idle moments in a long life.

In literature her taste was for the old than for the new, and she had a hearty contempt for that smattering of ephemeral criticism and culture which is so often used to conceal fundamental ignorance of the books really worth knowing.

Two women reading on a verandah at Ingham, ca. 1894-1903
(Harriett Petifore Brims, JOL, SLQ, Neg 132733)

Her conversational gifts were altogether exceptional. She was always perfectly natural, always in touch with those to whom she was talking, taking their points and interested in their interests. She was keenly alive to anything in her guests' conversation which struck her as important or curious or amusing, and was always ready with the apt reply which showed that she had been attending and not merely hearing. Her own copious and varied knowledge of life and society and art flowed in an easy and continuous stream, which never needed either pumping or damming. She could hit off a ludicrous situation - perhaps sometimes an absurd character - with a touch of genuine humour; and, if her moral sense was shocked or her convictions were outraged, she could express disapprobation with an emphasis all the more impressive because it was not violent.

Perhaps the only subject which did not interest Mrs Lowther, among all those which are discussed in modern society, was Health. Doctors and diseases, diets and systems, bored her to extremity; and this was natural enough, inasmuch as she had never had occasion, in her own case or in that of her family, to make herself acquainted with the dismal lore of the sick-room. She was one of the strongest women in the world; astonishingly active, and ignorant of the meaning of fatigue. In the discharge of her various duties as wife, mother, hostess, member of society, mistress of a large establishment [...] she laboured incessantly, and with no apparent loss of energy, till the last weeks of a protracted life. Energy was indeed her most striking characteristic; and by energy I mean that indefinable gift, rather spiritual than physical, which makes a man or woman live intensely in every nerve and fibre, and throw the whole being into the tasks and interests of the moment. - Sketches and Snapshots by George W.E. Russell

An interesting woman indeed, I don't use Russell's account to suggest that Mrs Lowther was the perfect woman, only that 1890s feminine perfection was the happy stuff of the eulogizing imagination. Whatever resemblance she bore with the real Mrs Lowther, the character Russell sketches for us in that passage shared characteristics with the New Woman, in that she was educated, independent, and capable. Like the Gibson girl, she might be put into practically any situation and would know how to behave. Like Langtry, she seemed capable of enchanting the people around her, so that you want to make her a friend. She would probably be a good friend to have because she listens so well. And like Minerva and Katie Sandwina, she was strong; healthy strong, but (unlike them) not lifting 3,000 pounds on her shoulders strong.

"The New Woman and her bicycle - there will be several varieties of HER!"

Women's weight lifting and bodybuilding still struggle for acceptance, the way that many women's sports are still not taken as seriously as men's. The perfect woman of the 1890s, therefore, poured her inexhaustible energy into more feminine pursuits, while ever-pressing the boundaries of what was traditionally masculine and what was traditionally feminine.

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If you lived in a major city, like London, electricity had become part of your everyday life by the 1890s. You might not have it in your home, but even if you did, you might not understand what it was.

Even electrical engineers, like Nikola Tesla, used words like "energy" to describe that which was generated by electricity and that which he felt after sleeping. It's not clear that many people distinguished between the two. Tesla actually got the idea for tuning radio frequencies through his belief that he and his mother were tuned into the same frequency when she died. Still, Tesla understood more about electricity than most people do today, but the electrical revolution was spreading rapidly.

A town called Godalming, Surrey, built the first central station to provide electricity to the public in the fall of 1881. They did so because the disagreed with the rate the gas company was charging them. I understand the feeling from dealing with my internet provider. Godalming's system was first used for their street lamps, but within the year more than 80% of its homes were connected. Overall, the town wasn't happy with their new electrical system and reverted to gas (also a familiar feeling in dealing with new internet providers). However, by 1882, London had a large-scale power station at Holburn Viaduct.

The power Holburn Viaduct produced was mostly used to power public resources. In spite of widespread apprehension the rails of the London Underground were being electrified. People worried about potentially-fatal electrical short circuits and dangerous accidents. London's Bersey Cabs hit the London streets in 1897. By 1899, ninety percent of New York City's taxi cabs were electric. Electrification of the home was reserved for the most forward-thinking members of the upper class, with the Savoy Hotel being the first such establishment to run its lights and lifts on electric power. While this impressed many of its guests, the popular imagination still viewed this new power source with as much fear as it did curiosity.

Many people believed electricity could recharge their bodies. The field of medicine was experimenting with electricity. Even rural doctors would charge for coursing low levels of electric current through the body in an effort to cure a variety of real and imaginary ailments. Of course, wherever you could find a quack Victorian doctor, you could find quack Victorian products.

I don't know what electric oil was, but it sounds like wonderful stuff. Moreover, I'm also not sure how you get electricity in a bottle.

In the midst of all this electric healing, electricity was deliberately used to kill for the first time in 1890, when a convicted murderer, William Kemmler sat in the electric chair on 6 August 1890. The first attempt left Kemmler unconsciousness, but did not stop his heart and breathing. After they recharged the generator, the second attempt ruptured blood vessels under Kemmler's skin; the areas around the electrodes singed. Kemmler's execution took about eight minutes. George Westinghouse later commented that "they would have done better using an axe," and a witnessing reporter wrote that it was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." Some say Kemmler burst into flame before finally dying.

Thomas Edison horrifically played on the public's fears about the dangers of electricity when attempting to discredit his competitors by electrocuting and torturing dogs, cats, cows, horses, and most famously, an elephant in public demonstrations.

In conclusion, 1890s people thought electricity had the potential to replace gas as a fuel source; that it was deadly dangerous; but that in small amounts, electricity had magical healing powers. I've read just enough to believe the rumours that some people actually wore electric jewelry for its healing powers and will leave you with the steampunk Jem image that conjured in my mind. The reference here is, of course, to Jem's flashing earrings.

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"...the consciousness of the mummy does not rest but is to be reckoned with." - Bram Stoker

Why are mummies so scary? They don't moan and walk around in real life, the way they do in movies, but they are actual things. Mummies are the realest of all the horror movie monsters. Vampires and werewolves come from literature; trolls and ghosts from myths and folklore; but mummies actually exist. Fear of mummies is a projection of European guilt over the colonial project and embodies aspects of that project by making magical monsters out of the colonial other.

Europeans weren't the first to plunder the Great Pyramids, but late-Victorian London is the focus of this blog, so I'm not going to get side-tracked by other plunderers, especially when the influence of writers from 1890s London has such a profound influence on the development of the monster mummy narrative.

The belief that some of the antiquities were cursed had been circulating around Europe since the end of the 17th century, but that didn't stop "collectors," like Lady Meux and Sir William Wilde. Sir William, Oscar Wilde's father, collects Egyptian antiquities that he took directly from Egypt. Bram Stoker later recalled listening to Sir William's stories about Egypt "before all the archeology started." Lady Meux developed one of the largest collections with over 2,000 pieces, including mummies, which she tried to donate to the British Museum upon her death.

This was the social/political climate in which Bram Stoker wrote the first prominent work of fiction featuring mummies as supernatural antagonists: The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903). Like Stoker's vampires, his mummies became postcolonial pop-culture icons. Before the Jewel was published, mummies' curses were used to explain the deaths of anyone connected to anyone who came into contact with a mummy. After the Jewel was published, the mummies themselves could be reanimated.

"Father, in the Egyptian belief, was the power of resurrection of a mummied body a general one, or was it limited? That is: could it achieve resurrection many times in the course of ages; or only once, and that one final?"

"There was but one resurrection," he answered. "There were some who believed that this was to be a definite resurrection of the body into the real world. But in the common belief, the Spirit found joy in the Elysian Fields, where there was plenty of food and no fear of famine. Where there was moisture and deep-rooted reeds, and all the joys that are to be expected by the people of an arid land and burning clime."

Then Margaret spoke with an earnestness which showed the conviction of her inmost soul:

"To me, then, it is given to understand what was the dream of this great and far-thinking and high-souled lady of old; the dream that held her soul in patient waiting for its realisation through the passing of all those tens of centuries. The dream of a love that might be; a love that she felt she might, even under new conditions, herself evoke. The love that is the dream of every woman's life; of the Old and of the New; Pagan or Christian; under whatever sun; in whatever rank or calling; however may have been the joy or pain of her life in other ways. Oh! I know it! I know it! I am a woman, and I know a woman's heart. [...]" - Bram Stoker, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903)

The idea of a mummified Egyptian queen, not dead, but asleep and dreaming of love, was transferred directly into an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997, in which the 500 year-old mummy of an Inca princess is brought back to life and falls in love with Zander.

"Inca Mummy Girl," Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
7 October 1997.

Conscious willing desire is what separates pop-culture supernatural antagonistic mummies from their zombie counter parts. Zombies mindlessly wander about seeking brains, but if a mummy feeds on a human it is for strength to carry on a new life, or to maintain guardianship over their afterlife. For Stoker's mummy, it was both. In this scene, they are trying to interpret "ka" and "ab" from an Egyptian text:

"It means that for this night the Queen's Double, which is otherwise free, will remain in her heart, which is mortal and cannot leave its prison-place in the mummy-shrouding. It means that when the sun has dropped into the sea, Queen Tera will cease to exist as a conscious power, till sunrise; unless the Great Experiment can recall her to waking life. It means that there will be nothing whatever for you or others to fear from her in such way as we have all cause to remember. Whatever change may come from the working of the Great Experiment, there can come none from the poor, helpless, dead woman who has waited all those centuries for this night; who has given up to the coming hour all the freedom of eternity, won in the old way, in hope of a new life in a new world such as she longed for...!"

George Washington used the term "the Great Experiment" to refer to the United States of America and Stoker was a scholar of American history, so it's not a stretch to say that "the Great Experiment," in this case, refers to modernity. If the experiment is a success the modern world will be everything that the mummy ever dreamed of, and by extension the right place for all other cursed Egyptian antiquities.

The notion that preserving antiquities is the burden of the benefactors of societies great experiments is at the heart of the cursed artefact myth and permeates the views of many modern Egyptologists and museum patrons. In the words of Jasmine Day in "The Mummy's Curse: Mummymania in the English-speaking World" (2006):

Popular archeology's promise of empowerment to its audiences can thus become implicated in a regressive imperialistic fantasy. The 'Humanity Ownership Argument' frequently invoked in debates about control of cultural property, holds that a body of material culture should not be possessed solely by a single ethnic group. This resembles the demand of the Dragon Principle that valuables be ceded to those who can best utilize them. [Some people] believed that indigenous peoples' requests for reparation of their former possessions threatens archeology. They spoke as if their own property were being threatened, because they identified with the archeologists.

In other words, to some, the British Museum is a better caretaker of Egyptian artefacts than Egyptians are. In 1890s terms, British collectors felt they were better caretakers of Egyptian antiquities that Egyptians were.

Bram Stoker might not have invented the mummy, but he animated it and infused its new life with the anxieties of the emerging postcolonial era, the traces of which can still be seen today.

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His day commences by seeing that his master’s dressing-room is in order; that the housemaid has swept and dusted it properly; that the fire is lighted and burns cheerfully; and some time before his master is expected, he will do well to throw up the sash [open the window] to admit fresh air, closing it, however, in time to recover the temperature which he knows his master prefers. It is now his duty to place the body-linen on the horse before the fire, to be aired properly; to lay the trousers intended to be worn, carefully brushed and cleaned, on the back of his master’s chair; while the coat and waistcoat, carefully brushed and folded, and the collar cleaned, are laid in their place ready to be put on when required. All the articles of the toilet should be in their places, the razors properly set and stropped, and hot water ready for use.

So says Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) on the duties of the Gentleman's Gentleman, or valet, which, although my husband and I have debated the point greatly, rhymes with 'pallet.'

Gentlemen generally prefer performing the operation of shaving themselves, but a valet should be prepared to do it if required; and he should be a good hairdresser. Shaving over, he has to brush the hair, beard and moustache, where that appendage is encouraged, arranging the whole simply and gracefully, according to the age and style of the countenance. Every fortnight, or three weeks at the utmost, the hair should be cut, and the points of the whiskers trimmed as often as required. A good valet will now present the various articles of the toilet as they are wanted; afterwards, the body-linen. Neck-tie, which he will put on, if required, and, afterwards, waist-coat, coat, and boots, in suitable order, and carefully brushed and polished.”

The valet was a gentleman's helicopter parent, overseeing any and every aspect of a gentleman's life - as required. P.G. Wodehouse's Reginald Jeeves, who has come to be thought of as the quintessential valet, takes his duties far beyond the call of any servant, or hired hand. Unlike a butler, Jeeves served the man, not the household, though his duties may at times make him responsible for the gentleman's household. Jeeves' genius and resourcefulness is so well known that it inspired the name of the website, AskJeeves (1996), which was renamed Ask.com in 2006.

Like Jeeves, Corporal Trim, from the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759), is a bit more clever, observant, insightful, and gentlemanly than the gentleman who employs him.

Which is just the sort of person you want around if you are on a vengeance mission, like Edmond Dantès in the Count of Monte Cristo (1844). No task is too great, or too small, for a good valet. Consequently, Dantès's valet, Baptistin, is devoted to the task of helping him destroy his enemies.

Loyalty, devotion, and personal service are integral to the role of the valet. The valet of Wayne Manor, Jarvis Pennyworth makes it his dying wish that his son, Alfred, continue serving the Wayne family in Batman.

Moreover, how does one become a gentleman's gentleman without becoming a gentleman himself? And if there was a way to become more gentlemanly than a gentleman, why didn't gentlemen take advantage of the same opportunity?

As Jeeves and Corporal Trim illustrate, one might become a valet in various ways. Someone, like Jeeves, may have started his career as a footman, while gradually picking up the rest of the skills his employer required and occasionally stepping into the role for guests who travelled without their valet, or younger members of the household who didn't yet have their own. Corporal Trim got his training in the military, as a companion-at-arms. Although Alfred is a retired intelligence agent, his family has a history of serving the Wayne family, so Alfred comes into his life's calling through established traditions.

Again, the main difference between butlers and valets is loyalty: butlers serve the household; valets serve the man. The female equivalent to the valet is the lady's maid, whereas, although it less common, women can be butlers too.

A man servant was too expensive, so I caught up a little garden girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals. Bunch became the best butler in the country. - Horace Smith, Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses (1892).

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Symptoms of coulrophobia can include sweating, nausea, feelings of dread, fast heartbeat, crying or screaming, and anger at being placed in a situation where a clown is present. - Source

1890 Occupational Photo of Circus Clown

Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns. It's Halloween, so don't unfriend, or unfollow me, for writing this post. Last October, I wrote a series of scary posts and I'm up to the same tricks this year.

Grimaldi and son.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, one of the most influential clowns was performing in London and his name was Joseph Grimaldi (1776-1837). Gimaldi was a Regency era stage performer, who expanded the role of the clown in British pantomime in the early 1800s. Grimaldi so dominated the comic stages of London that the harlequinade role of clown bears his name, "Joey," and his whiteface makeup design remains in use to this day.

Grimaldi's son tried to follow in his footsteps, but was never as successful as his father and, like his father became an alcoholic. He took his financial problems out on his parents, until his life came to an early end. After the son died, Grimaldi and his wife attempted suicide together, but failed and resolved to go on living what had turned into an impoverished life. Grimaldi outlived his wife by three years.

Duburau as 'Pierrot Laughing' (1855) by Nadar.

Meanwhile, in France, Jean-Gaspard Deburau (1796-1846) was going to court for killing a boy with his cane, after the boy insulted him on the street in 1936. Deburau was famous for playing the clown, Pierrot.

Certainly the violent and sometimes sinister cruelty that Debrau brought to his role had at least part of its source in the brooding rancor of his own temperament. On a spring day in 1836, he had shown to what lengths this rancor could carry him, when, while strolling with his young wife and shildren, he had warmed to anger under a street-boy's taunts and brought his heavy cane down on the young man's skull, killing him with a single blow. The court had acquitted the fashionable mime, but his act seemed to darken the already deepening shadows of Pierrot's billowy tunic. - Robert F. Storey, Pierrot: A Critical History of a Mask, 2014.

Having been acquitted of murder, Deburau carried on his clowning career. He didn't by any means invent the character of Pierrot, but introduced the signature black skull cap and collarless shirt to the role. Pierrot, as a character, leaves a lot of room for actors to express their own clowning style; eDeburau is not even seen as the most influential incarnation of Pierrot in that era.

Paul Legrand as Pierrot (1857) by Nadar.

In 1839, Paul Legrand (1816-1898) took to the French stage as Pierrot. Legrand is said to have brought dramatic realism to the role, greatly influencing pantomime as an art form.

Félicia Mallet as Pierrot (1895).

Félicia Mallet played another version of Pierrot toward the end of the century. Although she became better known as a singer, than a clown, George Bernard Shaw said of her role as Pierrot that:

Felicia Mallet is much more credible, much more realistic, and therefore much more intelligible — also much less slim, and not quite so youthful. Litini was like a dissolute "La Sylphide": Mallet is frankly and heartily like a scion of the very smallest bourgeoisie sowing his wild oats. She is a good observer, a smart executant, and a vigorous and sympathetic actress, apparently quite indifferent to romantic charm, and intent only on the dramatic interest, realistic illusion, and comic force of her work. And she avoids the conventional gesture-code of academic Italian pantomime, depending on popularly graphic methods throughout. - George Bernard Shaw in James Huneker, Dramatic Opinions and Essays by G. Bernard Shaw: Containing as Well A Word on the Dramatic Opinions and Essays, of G. Bernard Shaw, 1913.

While, Pierrot dominated France, Grimaldi's work was still more influential in London.

James Frowde

Grimaldi's signature red triangle cheeks reappeared the face of James Frowde (1831-1899) and many other clowns throughout the world. Frowde was an English clown and evangelical preacher, who married an equestrian performer from a circus family. While families, like Grimaldi's, suffered financial hardships, Victorians considered circus performers little better than beggars in England. That being said, not all circus families were so hard up. Frowde's father owned the circus he performed in: Hengler's Circus.

Hengler's Circus which prospered during the 1850s travelled under a series of different headings such as 'Hengler's Colossal Hippodrama and Grand Cirque Variety', Hengler's Colossal Moving Hippodrama and National Circus' and Hangler's Mammoth Circus and Great Equestrian Exhibition'. Even its catchphrase 'Amusement for the Million and Reational Recreation' reflects a switch to more demotic and pragmatic ambition as an impression of royal appointment is traded in for a democratically minded image of a judiciously balanced mass entertainment. - Helen Soddart, Rings of Desire: Circus History and Representation, 2000.

In that variety of names I see the clown shifting from the theatre with its stationary stage to the art of the spectacle and its travelling rings. I see the family politics of showcasing Frowde's equestrian wife. I also see an industry that had to compete with the American's Buffalo Bill's Wilde West Show.

1880s playbill for Hengler's Grand Cirque.

As American culture penetrated circus and theatre clowning in Europe, it's important to mention Dan Rice (1823-1900), an American clown, who is seen as the inspiration for Uncle Sam and was so popular that he ran for president in 1868.

Keeping up with the competition of the times, he coined the "One-Horse Show" and "Greatest Show" terms. Rice became one of America's first pop-culture icons and helped make the circus what it is today by combining a variety of acts, like animals and acrobats and, of course, clowns.

Dan Rice

For a period in the 1840s, he even performed in blackface. As his fame grew, he starred in song-and-dance parodies of Shakespeare, including "Dan Rice's Version of Othello" and "Dan Rice's Multifarious Account of Shakespeare's Hamlet." He's said to have been vaudeville before there was a vaudeville.

Rice was not simply funnier than other clowns; he was different, mingling jokes, solemn thoughts, civic observations, and songs. - David Carlyon, Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard Of, 2004.

Gilbert and Sullivan's first collaboration incorporated a pair of clowns who adopted the mannerisms of both Grimaldi and Rice. Harry (1833-1895) and Fred Payne (1841–1880) were collectively known as the Payne Brothers.

Harry & Fred Payne

Harry was Covent Garden's clown throughout the 1860s, a role once played by Grimaldi.

Grimaldi's Leap Frog act at Covent Garden (1812).

Harry was to clowning in London what Dan Rice was to the United States.

Famous clown Harry Payne in full make up and posing for Sambourne 1885 - After they ate oysters& champage at Rules!! pic.twitter.com/8mPxGChHaO
— 18 Stafford Terrace (@18Stafford) August 13, 2014

Every Boxing Day Harlequinade at Drury Lane opened with Harry's cheer-filled somersault and catchphrase: "Here we are again!" His obituary in the Times said:

Mr. Payne was at once an actor, a singer, and an accomplished humourist. Probably he owed something to the tuition of his father … whose mimetic feats he would seek to emulate as much as the altered conditions of pantomime entertainments would permit.

Sadly, his younger brother, Fred's career relied more on their father's and Fred died many years earlier.

These were by no means all of the clowns that had an impact on the art of clowning in the nineteenth century, but they were the best ones I could find with pictures. I would love to hear more about why Deburau was acquitted for killing that boy who insulted him in the street. If you know more, please share in the comments.

In the meantime, enjoy these photos of clowns in the 1890s:

Enrico Caruso as Canio, Italy (1892).

Sara Bernhardt as “Pierrot the Assasin” by Nadar (1893).

World's Fair in Chicago (1893).

Do-Re-Mi, a musical clown trio (1895) more info.

Clown Band, Ringling Brothers Road Book (1897).

Clowns (1897).

Natalie and his Educated Pigs, Ringling Brother Road Book (1897).

Natalie and donkey at Stampede in Vancouver (1897).

Guillaume Tell et le clown Melies (1898).

Clown, New York (1898).

The stars Drury Lane's Harlequinade, 1898-99 season (including the Payne Brothers).

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Freak shows and taxidermy: these two trends coincided with horrifying results in the Victorian era.

The popularity of freak shows saw its first rise in the Elizabethan era and examples of taxidermy in apothecaries date back to the middle ages, but something special happened in the nineteenth century when American circuses began touring Europe and exporting their ideas. That special thing was P.T. Barnum's Feejee mermaid.

The Feejee mermaid began its life in Japan, where some fishing communities had long histories of creating taxidermy hybrids out of monkey torsos and fish tails, which after is what the Feejee mermaid actually was. An American sailor, Captain Samuel Barrett Edes bought the mermaid in Japan for $6,000 and displayed it in London in 1822. No big deal, until it was sold to the Boston Museum after Edes' death in 1842.

Barnum media advert.

The museum presented it to P.T. Barnum, who confounded a naturalist with it. Though confounded, the naturalist would not attest to its authenticity because he simply did not believe in mermaids. Barnum saw a certain appeal in the mermaid and leased it from the museum for $12.50 a week, then wrote fake letters to New York newspapers from around the country, which served to fabricate a new origin story for the Feejee mermaid. Through an elaborate ruse and the assistance of Dr. J. Griffin, Barnum generated enough publicity to launch the Feejee mermaid's new career as a public curiosity.

This original Feejee mermaid was most likely lost to one of multiple fires in Barnum's museum, but it was such a popular and controversial attraction that the idea was copied many times - often with the correct spelling of Fiji.

The copycats grew increasingly innovative, giving rise to the dime museum in London and the United States. Dime museums were designed to entertain and 'morally educate' the masses (lower classes), although the 'moral education' involved appears to centre on the perverse logic of the anti-masturbation movement. As a social trend, dime museums reached their peak in the 1890s and began to peter out in the 1920s.

If you thought the Feejee Mermaid was bad, dime museums gave us the fur-bearing trout. Fur-bearing trout purportedly live in the coldest parts of the rivers and lakes of the Northern reaches of North America. Supposedly, the fur-bearing trout either grew its hair to keep warm down there, or because someone accidentally spilled four jugs of hair tonic in the Arkansas River.

Perhaps the most tragic thing about dime museums was that they were able to convince many people that their exhibits were real and these people would go on believing in ridiculous things for a very long time. A Canadian, Ross C. Jobe purchased one of these taxidermy trouts, which he presented to the Royal Museum of Scotland, where the fish was found to be covered in rabbit fur.

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I wouldn't have survived infancy in the Victorian Era.

There were truly bizarre ways of dying in the 1890s, but you could also die from the very mundane. If you were a woman, you might die from child birth. If you were a baby, the wallpaper, or the way that your bottle was designed could kill you. Buzzfeed once wrote an article on bizarre Victorian deaths.

Reportedly: in 1875, a man was killed by a mouse in South London.

“That a mouse can exist for a considerable time without much air has long been a popular belief and was unfortunately proved to be a fact in the present instance, for the mouse began to tear and bite inside the man’s throat and chest, and the result was that the unfortunate fellow died after a little time in horrible agony.”

Which is horrifying, but, typically, the things that killed you in the 1890s were far more commonplace and children were the most vulnerable. Wallpaper (arsenic), germs (everywhere), and milk were three incredibly mundane baby killers at the time.

1. Arsenic and arsenic-laced wallpaper

From the 1850s until the 1890s, green wallpaper was a silent killer. Arsenic was used to create a shade called Paris Green. Once on the walls, the arsenic entered the air. After exhibiting symptoms of diphtheria, patients generally died of asphyxiation. The worst part: treatment usually involved being confined to a cold room with no circulation, but usually green wallpaper because it was already present in the home. Such a death usually claimed children first. Paris Green was not identified as the silent killer until the end of the century.

Before it was recognized as a killer, the Victorians thought arsenic possessed many health benefits. A health spa in southeast Austria was home to the arsenic-eaters. People who travelled to the area would take ratsbane in their coffee. It became trendy to take ever increasing amounts of arsenic, until you got diarrhea. While many people consumed doses strong enough to kill a healthy person today, they believed it improved their complexions and aided their respiratory system.

2. Germs, surgeons, and baby bottles.

Germs weren't known to cause disease until 1867, and even then, it took a lot of work on the parts of Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and their supporters to adopt methods that protected patients from germs. Methods that protected patients from germs included washing your hands before performing surgery. One doctor, Joseph Lister made great strides in gaining acceptance for the germ theory of disease and preventing infections by keeping bacteria from entering the body through wounds and sores, through the use of carbolic acid as an antiseptic.

A Victorian surgeon in barber college
(source and date unknown).

Can you even imagine a world where surgeons need convincing to wash their hands before operating? Surgical practices were bad enough without conducting the surgery with dirty hands. Rich people paid the doctor to look after them in their homes, so only the poor went to hospitals. If the operating room in the hospital wasn't clean, you stood a one in four chance of dying from a fever caused by infection after the surgery. Most wealthy homes didn't have a proper operating room at all, so it is no wonder that surgeons didn't have the respect they do today and were seen as butchers!

Often patients would die in shock on the operating table because the only anesthesia available was ether, or whiskey.

But I'm getting off track discussing the horrors of surgery... the point was that most doctors didn't even believe in germs. Germaphobes wouldn't be considered crazy to worry about eating or touching anything the nineteenth century.

In England during the Victorian years, approximately HALF of all babies born alive died prior to their first birthday. Even worse, only two out of ten ~ a staggering statistic ~ reached their second birthday. Sanitation was deplorable, and people did not yet understand the value in sterilization. Hygiene was essentially unheard of - Source.

A baby bottle that attached a nipple to the end of a rubber feeding tube was popular for decades after doctors condemned it because the feeding tube was impossible to clean.

3. Milk and tuberculosis.

If the baby bottle and wallpaper didn't kill your beloved baby, the milk in the bottle might have. Mrs Beeton recommended adding boracic acid to milk to remove evidence that milk had gone off. In 1882, 20,000 samples of milk from homes were tested and one in five samples proved to have been adulterated this way. On its own, boracic acid causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Combined with milk, the slow-growing mycobacterium bovis found in milk flourishes and causes tuberculosis.

If this post wasn't morbid enough for you, look at my photos of Victorian dead people and have a safe Halloween!

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Founded in London in 1862, the Ghost Club is the oldest paranormal investigation and research organization in the world. The organization is still active today and its members have included: Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W.B. Yeats, and Siegfried Sassoon.

The Ghost Club was seven years in the making, having started as a conversation about ghosts between Cambridge fellows at Trinity college in 1855. Naturally, it attracted some banter in the Times, but with Charles Dickens and some Cambridge men among their ranks, the Ghost Club soldiered on.

The Davenport Brothers and their spirit cabinet (1870).

Like real-life Victorian Ghostbusters -- though maybe they were more like Myth Busters, the Ghost Club investigated spiritual phenomena, like the Davenport Brother's spirit cabinet. The Davenport Brothers were travelling American magicians and the spirit box was their most famous illusion. In the spirit box illusion, the brothers were tied inside the box with some musical instruments. When the box was closed, the instruments played, but when it was opened, the brothers remained tied in their original positions. The Ghost Club never published the result of their investigation.

Members of the Ghost Club (1882).

Following Dickens' death, the Ghost Club became inactive during the 1870s, but was revived on All Saints Day 1882. It remained a select and private organization of earnest ghost hunters, who really believed that ghosts existed. They met monthly and women were not admitted.

Investigations into the spirit world were referred to as 'physical research,' and the growing popularity of Spiritualism at this time attracted people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sigmund Freud to its meetings. Many members treated Ghost Club as a kind of refuge, where they were able to conduct the kind of research and have the kind of conversations that they were unable to have elsewhere.

At each meeting of the Ghost Club a list of all the members, dead or alive, was read. Deceased members were said to sometimes make their presence felt during this activity.

Sir Arthur Grey of Jesus College, Cambridge, immortalized the Ghost Club as "The Everlasting Club" in 1919 - a ghost story that, around Cambridge, some still believe to be true.

Belief in the evocation of the spirits of the dead is as old as Humanity. At one period of the world's history it was called Thaumaturgy, at another Necromancy and Witchcraft, in these later years, Spiritualism. It is new wine in old bottles. - The Spirit World Unmasked, Henry Ridgely Evans (1897).

The rules for hosting a seance haven't changed much since the late nineteenth century, though some of the equipment is now fancier.

1. First, you need a location for the seance.

Choosing a location could be dependant on the reason for the seance. Sometimes, a particular room may be chosen for its connection to the departed, but the Victorians loved hosting them in their sitting rooms, at least according to the spiritualist and artist, Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884). Though her life and writings, Houghton seems more familiar with the spirit world than anyone; she used to let herself become possessed by ghosts so she could paint.

Her book, Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance describes a small room with nothing but the table, seating, and equipment used in the seance, which leads us to the second step in hosting a Victorian seance:

2. Minimize distractions.

Distractions aren't helpful when communicating with the dead, limit electronic devices, minimize the amount of light in the room, and remove objects that will otherwise interfere with the seance.

3. Gather your equipment.

Although anything can be used in a seance, a candle is pretty standard. It's good to choose one with a wide base so that it's less likely to fall over. Also, lighting and extinguishing a candle can signify the beginning and end of the seance. Houghton used the act of extinguishing the candle to cease communications when she encountered frightening spirits.

At the very instant that I put out the candle, the slate [used for automatic writing] was taken from before me, and we heard sounds of its being written upon in the air, at about the height of our heads. It was put back upon the table, and when we had struck a light, we found written upon it:

e l b u o r t ll a h s I

you no more :

which meant "I shall trouble you no more;" the first words of the sentence having been spelt backwards.

The skeptical Henry Ridgely Evans described automatic writing as the act in which a psychic or medium "gives information transcending his conscious knowledge of a subject," while in a state of hypnosis. If someone is going to do automatic writing at your seance, in addition to your candle, a slate, notebook, or Ouija board may also be helpful.

Ouija boards were invented to capitalize on the seance trend of the late Victorian era and are supposed to work by letting unseen spirits communicate through your fingertips by pointing the planchette at the letters and numbers on the board.

Spiritual Telegraph Dial

Ouija boards weren't the only gadgets for talking to spirits. Hudson Tuttle (1836-1910) of Berlin Heights OH invented the Pychograph, or dial planchette, many years before the Ouija board hit the market. The Spiritual Telegraph Dial was being used by mid-century and adapted to test whether people who claimed to be psychics were actually frauds.

Without automatic writing and in the earlier years of the Victorian era, a spirit in a Victorian seance might communicate by shouting letters through a medium, or using a binary code by using a series of taps. The latter was known as "spirit rapping" and was popular enough that an American wrote a song about it. According to Lisa Hix, the table is all many Victorians needed to communicate:

Before long, word got out that if you and your friends or family put your hands on a small- to medium-sized table and waited, it would eventually start moving. Naturally, people believed it was the spirits trying to communicate, through what became known as “table-tipping” or “table-turning.” A scientist by the name of Michael Faraday studied the physics of the phenomenon in 1851 and concluded that the sitters were, in fact, unconsciously moving the table, a phenomenon now known as the “ideomotor response,” but his findings didn’t deter anyone - Source.

Since you're not going to let that deter you from hosting your Victorian seance, put your candle and means of communicating on your seance table, surround it with chairs and fill those chairs with enthusiastic guests.

3. Invite guests.

The Fox sister were famous mediums and
great to have at a seance.

If at all possible, you should invite a Countess and more than one medium, so that the medium who is not performing the seance can look at the habits of the performer with judgement and suspicion. It's fun to invite someone, who totally believes in ghosts (for their enthusiasm), and someone who doesn't (but frightens easily).

When you invite your guests, encourage them to bring sentimental objects, if there's a particular spirit they wish to communicate with.

4. Set up cameras!

The step before actually beginning your seance, is setting up your recording equipment. It may seem un-Victorian to set up a hidden video recorder, but many Victorians documented their seances in the best ways they could, so they could capture images of ghosts and catch anyone tipping, or rapping on, the table.

5. Form a circle.

Instruct your guests to sit as quietly as possible around the seance table and to identify any noises they inadvertently make, so as not to misread a fart as a communication from the other side.

6. The Lord's Prayer.

Once everyone is seated, it adds drama to say a prayer of protection. Houghton always said the Lord's Prayer before a seance.

8. Light the candle and begin asking questions.

Ask the spirits to join yours circle and to communicate through the method you have provided.

Be polite. Don't only ask questions about yourself. Ask their name. Ask if they have anything they want to talk about, but also try to focus on the purpose of your seance.

9. When you are ready to end your seance, say good-bye and extinguish the candle.

If someone is scared, you can extinguish the candle abruptly and tell the spirits to leave you alone, but it's always best to be polite ...if you can.

10. Review the evidence.

Did you catch any ghosts in photos, or video?

Did you catch anyone trying to trick the others into thinking a spirit was present?

Henry Ridgely Evans was an American magician and skeptic of spiritualism, who wrote prolifically on the subject - publishing two books in 1897 alone. He claimed to have sat with many famous mediums, who produced "little to convince him of the fact of spiritual communication." Maybe you'll have better luck.

For all of your other Victorian seance needs, visit: the Victorian Web, the Museum of Talking Boards, and the Mysterious Planchette.

Happy Halloween!

The girl in the top left corner
has a mischievous face.

Throughout history, teenagers have rebelled against their parents. Popular psychology maintains that youthful rebellion helps young people build their own identity, separate from their parents. It happens in every class, culture, and race, so of course it happened in the Victorian Era.

You may say: "but Victorians were so proper!"

"Myths about the Victorian family are almost as numerous as those about the American West. Many regard the institution as a model for modern life, full of dutiful children and loving parents. Others see it as an example to avoid -- rigidly patriarchal, unloving, and riddled with class and gender restrictions. Both views, though too generalized, contain some truth, partly because of the tremendous variety of family lives during Queen Victoria's reign. Good or bad, families were the most important factor in a child's success in life" - Ginger S Frost.

Even today, we tend to attribute the tendency to rebel with trouble in the individual, sometimes linking rebellious behaviour with the early signs of a psychopathic personality. Though teen rebellion often seems selfish, fed by boredom and glib, it generally has nothing to do with those traits in the person, but more to do with what one is rebelling against.

Young middle and upper-class Victorians became social reformers, committed to mending the injustices perpetrated by their society and sometimes within their own families. Young Victorians, like Bram Stoker, became aware of the problems associated with alcoholism and other addictions. The era saw the rise of the suffragette and educational reforms to help the poor. Of course, some young women started smoking and drinking to irritate their parents and some young men dressed below their station, so they could sneak into the poorer neighbourhoods for a bit of slumming - not all rebels are altruistic. We all had that friend who made us aware of broader social problems by personifying them.

1909 woman smoking opium.

Although teen rebellion was wide-spread, two particular people come to mind, when I think of 1890s writers, who were rebellious teenagers: Edmund Gosse and Constance Wilde.

Philip Henry Gosse with his son Edmund (1857).
Frontispiece to the first edition of Father and Son.

Obviously, Gosse comes to mind because of his memoir, Father and Son (1907), which bore the subtitle: "a study of two temperaments." His father, Philip Henry Gosse was a deeply religious scientist, who rejected the theories of his contemporary, Charles Darwin. In Father and Son, Gosse focuses on his father's rejection of the theory of evolution and his own coming of age through the rejection of his father's religion.

My own state, however, was, I should think, almost unique among the children of cultivated parents. In consequence of the stern ordinance which I have described, not a single fiction was read or told to me during my infancy. The rapture of the child who delays the process of going to bed by cajoling 'a story' out of his mother or his nurse, as he sits upon her knee, well tucked up, at the corner of the nursery fire—this was unknown to me. Never in all my early childhood did anyone address to me the affecting preamble, 'Once upon a time!' I was told about missionaries, but never about pirates; I was familiar with hummingbirds, but I had never heard of fairies—Jack the Giant- Killer, Rumpelstiltskin and Robin Hood were not of my acquaintance; and though I understood about wolves, Little Red Ridinghood was a stranger even by name. So far as my 'dedication' was concerned, I can but think that my parents were in error thus to exclude the imaginary from my outlook upon facts. They desired to make me truthful; the tendency was to make me positive and sceptical. Had they wrapped me in the soft folds of supernatural fancy, my mind might have been longer content to follow their traditions in an unquestioning spirit.

As Gosse grew up to be a poet, it's safe to say that his life was formed through his parents' teachings - though not in the ways that they intended.

Constance Lloyd
(before she married Oscar Wilde).

Constance Wilde had a terrible relationship with her mother. Franny Moyle, Constance's biographer, called Constance's mother "a selfish and difficult woman." Her mother's conduct toward Constance may be characterized as abusive. It was a relationship that Constance survived through forming a rich internal life and getting away to school by taking classes at the University of London. The 1871 and 1881 censuses describe Constance as a scholar. As was the case with Gosse, Constance's rebellion was ideological, but also deeply personal.

The outfit that Constance is pictured in above was typical of young aesthetes in her day, which was viewed as both a fashion and an intellectual movement - almost the way that hippies, or people who only wear vegan clothing can be viewed as participating in both a fashion and intellectual (or moral) movement. Constance's brother mocked her dresses and the rest of her family, including an eventual step-sister, encouraged her to dress more like them. But Constance married the Prince of the Aesthetic Movement and realized her independence through marriage - a trope in young Victorian women's lives.

Gosse and Constance's stories critique the Victorian Era as a whole and represent examples of positive social changes (women's education and learning in general), but not all teenage rebellions go so well.

Teen pregnancies are often used as a symbol of teenagers gone wild, so it is worth noting here that during Queen Victoria's reign the rate of premarital pregnancies hovered around 20%, according to Eurostat. It's likely that number was much higher. Yet, there is something twisted about viewing sex as an act of rebellion.

Boys marching out of the London Foundling Hospital for the last time (1926).
For more on the London Foundling Hospital, click here.

The "fallen woman" was a blanket term that Victorians applied to any unmarried woman with sexual knowledge of any sort. This term covered rape victims, prostitutes, and unwed mothers alike; in some families, it might even be applied to a woman who read French novels.

The "new woman" represented another kind of rebellion, closer to what young Constance Wilde was up to. This term was popularized by Henry James in the 1870s and referred to an emerging feminist ideal.

"In Victorian England, as men clung to the sanctity of the patriarchy, they were increasingly becoming more and more frightened of their own women. Bram Stoker capitalized on this fear in his iconic novel, Dracula. In 1897, a "New Woman" was emerging in Victorian society, coinciding with the women's suffrage movement throughout England. This New Woman, riddled with feminist awareness, would be the cause of fodder for Stoker's heroine, Mina Harker. Because this New Woman was aspiring to be independent of patriarchal male dominance, (or had already obtained said independence) to the old guard of Victorian society, she was viewed as perverse. The New Woman was a mutation of the woman the patriarchal society wanted her to be. The New Woman's strides towards economic and sexual changes in society as a whole should be viewed as terrifying. Stoker takes these beliefs, and applies them to his female characters in Dracula" - source.

Even Bram Stoker's wife might have been viewed in terms of the new woman for her interest in aesthetic, also called "hygienic," dress, she ran in the same circle of women as Constance and even once dated Oscar Wilde.

"New Woman — Wash Day" (1901)

Oscar Wilde's youthful romance with the future Mrs Stoker was also a kind of young rebellion because she was penniless, while he came from an upper-class family, whose fortune was waning.

There were lots of ways for young men to rebel, especially in the 1890s. Any society that oppresses one group, the way that Victorians repressed women, also represses the dominant group by making the perceived characteristics of the oppressed group taboo. Oscar Wilde rebelled by incorporating long hair and feminine characteristics into his interpretation of aestheticism.

Young people help refresh the human population, getting rid of the old ideas that aren't working anymore.

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At the end of one month, I plan out the details of mine and my husband's menu for the next month. Part way through Thanksgiving weekend, as I look toward Christmas, I feel compelled to keep us from gaining too much weight. As a Victorianist, I remembered reading recently that Victorian diets were some of the healthiest in history - if, of course, you practice better sanitation and avoid gimmicks, like arsenic wafers (those were never good for you)!

It's easy to find meal plans, like what I normally make, online and I often turn to them for inspiration, so I did the same thing in search of a Victorian menu, with no such luck. Of course, this was complicated by the fact that I don't want to eat like a poor Victorian, who ate weird street food and rotting vegetables. I also don't want to eat like a rich Victorian because they spent too much money and wasted too much food. I wanted a practical Victorian diet.

Excerpt from William Banting's Letter on Corpulence (1864)

In my effort to create a meal-plan for the Victorian middling sort, I consulted the Letter on Corpulence (1864) by William Banting, and certainly took his advice on tea and alcohol, but I also consulted numerous other sources to decide what we would eat on a typical week in December in 1889. As the woman of the house, I would be arranging the menu, as I am today, but I would have had a servant to cook it for me. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many homemade baked goods and puddings.

Monday
Cold puddings!

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, a biscuit, preserves, broiled bone, and devilled kidneys.
Lunch: bread, with cold leftover beef and asparagus/potato, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, a pear, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or three glasses of madeira, shrimp creole, spinach, rice, and a pear.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of madeira, and a little more shrimp, or a pear.

Tuesday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, dry toast, a soft boiled egg, and ham or bacon.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, a pear, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of white wine, chicken baked in rice, asparagus, carrot, and walnuts.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of white wine, another piece of chicken, or some nuts.

Wednesday
Eggs for breakfast in the 1890s (source).

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, bread, bacon, and eggs.
Lunch: cold chicken sandwich, a cup of warm broth, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, a pear, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of white wine, curried fish (preferably cod), carrots, turnips, and nuts.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of white wine, and another small piece of fish.

Thursday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, leftover fish, a fried egg, and a biscuit.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, an apple, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of good claret, Spanish stew, with bread, salad, and sliced apple.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of good claret, another meatball,

Friday
Kitchen utensils.

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, savoury eggs, and bread.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, grapes, and a pudding.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of sherry, fried fillets of sole, green peas, and grapes.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of sherry, and small piece of sole.

Saturday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, and leftover fish on buttered bread.
Lunch: a couple pieces of buttered bread, a slice of meat, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, an apple, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of white wine, beans & bacon, sauté breast of marinated chicken, boiled potato, and sliced apple.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of white wine, and another piece of chicken.

Sunday

Breakfast: a large cup of tea, beans & bacon, with savoury eggs, fried potato, and toast.
Lunch: cold chicken sandwich, a cup of warm broth, and a cold pudding.
Tea: a cup of tea, an apple, and a biscuit.
Dinner: 2 or 3 glasses of good claret, beef, potatoes, asparagus, and sliced apple.
Supper: 1 or 2 glasses of good claret, and a little chunk of beef.

The breakfast bread, bacon, and eggs of modern brunch was well-established by the Victorian era. Eggs were typically boiled, fried, or poached. Wootton Bridge Historical has several good Victorian recipes for morning eggs, including: egg fritters, curried eggs, and Turkish eggs. Broiled bones and devilled kidneys, however, were just as common. Devilled kidneys were lambs kidneys cooked in a spiced sauce. Also common was the leftover cold meat from the previous evening's meal. Friday's savoury eggs are scrambled and fried with the Spanish meatballs from Thursday's meal.

To be practical and not create a lot of waste, food from the previous evenings meal could be eaten at lunch too. Preserving food was an important part of life in a Victorian kitchen. Potted meats could easily be used at lunch and I found a recipe for potted rabbit here. I think potted meat was the reason anyone ever thought of suggesting SPAM as something to eat. In the absence of leftovers, it could be spread on bread, during lunch. My suggestion of a "cold pudding" is based on James Greenwood's Seven Curses of London (1869), as quoted here.

I will have nothing new add to existing conversations about Victorian tea. I borrowed these recommendations from Banting.

It is easy to find out about what Victorians ate when they were entertaining, but what about when it was just the family at home? Did they always have 14 course dinners? Often not! During my quest for Victorian dinner recipes that my husband would eat, I found some one-pot meals, like the chicken baked in rice, which is like a meat pie with a meat crust and none of the vegetables. I added vegetables to this meal. For dinner, most records suggest a meat dish, two vegetables, and a bit of fruit for dinner.

For dinner, I would use Wootton Bridge Historical's curried fish recipe, and found many other recipes there too, including the fried fillet of sole and on the same site, Spanish stew recipe. Sunday dinner after church was always beef.

Dinner was the main meal of the day. It happened in the afternoon, or early evening. Supper was the Victorian equivalent of a late-night snack. By all reports, most people just picked at what was leftover fro dinner when suppertime came around, as they seemingly did for all their other meals.

When all is said and done, however, I'm having a hard time believing the five glasses of alcohol a day are really good for you, but maybe because so many preservatives and weird sugars have been cut from our diet, maybe...

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It's Christmas card time and I stumble upon the headline: "The 19th Century 'Escort Cards' with Pick-up Lines You Definitely Haven't Heard Before." The cards are lovely, but the headline is baiting. The escort card was one of many types of innocent cards that Victorians used. Escort, or "flirtation," cards were so commonplace that one American grocer adopted their style for an advertisement in 1900.

A commercial ad variation on the flirtation card,
issued by a grocery store. Circa 1900. Source.

1880s and 1890s flirtation cards came in two varieties: the calling card, and the escort card. The calling cards were used to formally introduce oneself to an acquaintance. A gentleman looking for love might have had a set of these printed up with his name on them to be used as an icebreaker at formal gatherings. The escort card was a novelty, reserved for more casual interactions.

Mid-century advancements in print making led to a proliferation of ephemera, like these and a great variety of other cards that helped people navigate the strict rules of middle-class etiquette. Like acronyms on the internet today, the verbal and non-verbal messages on the cards were a short-cut to communication understood by all who used them.

"To the unrefined or under-bred, the visiting card is but a trifling and insignificant bit of social paper; but to the cultured disciple of social law, it conveys a subtle and unmistakable intelligence. Its texture, style of engraving, and even the hour of leaving it, combine to place the stranger, whose name it bears, in a pleasant or a disagreeable attitude, even before his manners, conversation and face have been able to explain his social position." John Young, Our Deportment (1890).

Most commonly the calling card was left at the house of someone you wanted to visit. If the recipient wanted you to visit, they would send you their card. If no card was sent, or your reply card came back in an envelope, you weren't to return. The size of a gentleman's card indicated his marital status. Women's cards were always bigger than men's. During a first visit, a gentleman would leave a card for each lady in the household. Blank spaces on the cards could be used to write notes. Flirtation and escort cards filled those spaces with prepared messages.

If there was a late-Victorian social pastime greater than flirting, it was mourning. The symbols and decorations on mourning communicated the social status of the mourners and social status was, as it is, aspirational.

These cards were presented to everyone who attended the funeral.

When public figures, like Abraham Lincoln, passed, print shops around the world manufactured and sold the cards as collectibles and people most certainly collected them.

Set of three Lincoln mourning cards.

Albums for collection and display of cards were a common fixture in Victorian parlours. Printing a new card was like writing a Facebook status update in that you used it to communicate what you were interested in at the moment to your peers. Because the printing of cards was relevant to a wide range of social activities a collection of cards served as an entertaining record of all that had passed in your social network. When people didn't follow the proper usage of cards (like oversharing on Facebook), they faced social consequences (blocked/unfriended).

Wedding card (1883).

Assorted Victorian dance cards.

Like the Facebook newsfeed, card collections weren't limited to personal cards, but included photographic cabinet cards, advertisements, political propaganda, and cards with uplifting or humorous images and messages.

Someone said recently that in the age of social media, millennials have begun remembering their lives in the present moment, by documenting and sharing everything that happens to them. Cards were the Victorian way of doing the same thing - even allowing young couples to flirt in plain sight.

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It's the night before New Year's Eve and Willie Wilde's best friend, Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (Tex) comes to call on him at Lady Jane's house. A Dutchman, Tex brings with him a basket full of pastries and, knowing how much Lady Jane loves folktales, a story! This might, or might not, have happened, but is the pretext I'm using to write about olibollen.

Oliebollen are a traditional Dutch food eaten at New Year's. The name literally translates to "oil balls" and they were the inspiration for the American invention of the donut. I was always made to understand that these treats are so fattening that it would be bad for you to eat them more than once a year, but the history of Oliebollen and the story Tex would have told Lady Jane are the real New Year's treat.

Imagine, Willie, Lady Jane, and Tex sit around the fire. Lady Jane's servant, Mrs Faithful brings them a warm plate of oliebollen and three cups of whiskey and eggnog. Willie and Lady Jane get powdered sugar on their faces and clothes, as they take their first bites of this doughy pastry with bits of apple, raisins, and dried cranberries, and Tex tells them about Perchta.

Family portrait: Perchta, Krampus Jr., Krampus, and Angel.
James Mundie (2012).

"Perchta – Derived from an early Germanic word meaning “bright or “glorious”. Perchta is famed for her dual nature. Her grim aspect is known as “Perchta the Belly Slitter”. Perchta is alternately described as kind or violent, as a monstrous hag or a willowy maiden" - source.

Perchta is a pagan witch, or Germanic goddess (depending on your point of view), who plays the role of guardian of the beasts, during the twelve days of Christmas. At Yuletide, Perchta flew around the Netherlands with evil spirits looking for food and would cut open the belly of anyone she came across to steal their food. However, if you had been eating oliebollen, the fat in the dough made it so that her sword would slide of your belly.

Young woman with a cooking pot filled with
oliebollen (Aelbert Cuyp, ca. 1652)

While records indicate that the Dutch have been eating oliebollen since medieval times, the first recipe appears in "De verstandige kock" (1667). At that time, they were still oliekoecken (oily cookies); it wasn't until the 1890s that the word oliebollen became the more popular term, appearing in an 1896 Dutch dictionary.

Everywhere in the world that I have travelled, Dutch people serve oliebollen to their friends on New Year's Eve, so I'm pretty sure that Tex would have had some for the Wildes in London in the 1890s.

Have a safe and Happy New Year!

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Lady Meux and Egyptology

Cartographic Fictions and the Poverty of Digital Archives

Humans of London (in the 1890s)

The Victorian (and pre-Victorian) Pug Cult

Poop in (Victorian) Beards

Poe is nowhere, but Bram Stoker's mother is everything!

Top 10 Wildean Insults

The Perfect Woman

Popular Perceptions of Electricity in the 1890s

How Bram Stoker Reanimated Mummies

The Gentleman's Gentleman

Victorian Clowns and Clowning

The Feejee Mermaid and the Fur-bearing Trout

Three Common Victorian Baby-Killers

The Ghost Club

10 Steps to Hosting Your Own Victorian Seance

Victorian Teenagers Gone Wild

How to Eat Like a Victorian

Flirtation, Calling, and Escort Cards: the social media of the 1890s

Perchta and the History of Oliebollen