The Victorian Peeper

It's Jelly, Baby

2008-07-24T07:27:00.010-06:00

Sam Bompas and Harry Parr of London create unique sculptures of British architectural icons such as St Paul's Cathedral, the Millennium Bridge, and the Eden Project. Their medium? Why, that ubiquitous Victorian foodstuff: jelly.

Bompas and Parr say that their work occupies a niche "in the space between food and architecture . . . jelly is the perfect site for an examination of food and architecture due to its uniquely plastic form and the historic role it has played in exploring notions of taste."

The Victorian period was the golden age of jelly and other gelatin-based foods such as aspics. Mrs Beeton's Dictionary of Everyday Cookery (1865) includes four pages of jelly recipes, although she notes that jellies "are not the nourishing food they were at one time considered to be." Still, they looked spectacular on the table or sideboard.

Shown above is part of the Victorian breakfast with jelly created by Bompas and Parr for Warwick Castle's 2007 celebration of nineteenth-century Christmas traditions. The 12-course, 300-ingredient, 4000-calorie feast included Scotch woodcock (scrambled eggs made with egg yolks and cream spread on toast with anchovy paste) and haddock in puff pastry. Read the BBC report here and watch the YouTube video here.

Earlier this month, as part of the London Festival of Architecture, the company sponsored a jelly mould competition and workshop that led to the creation of 2000 wobbling jellies consumed at a banquet at University College London.

Resources:

Historic Food: Jellies and Creams

Victorian Writers' Rooms

2008-07-17T06:55:00.006-06:00

One of my favorite features of the online version of The Guardian is a page called simply "Writers' Rooms." Once a week or so, a photo and brief description is provided of the writing den of a famous novelist, biographer, or literary critic. These used to be primarily living authors; recently some historical figures have been included.

Check out:

The spartan shed behind a modest house in Ayot St Lawrence, built on a platform that rotated with the sun, in which George Bernard Shaw churned out his voluminous correspondence.

The Jacobean beamed study lined with Indian rugs in which Rudyard Kipling wrote, watched by a stern portrait of his wife, Carrie.

Charles Darwin's study at Down House, Kent, in which On the Origin of Species first saw the light of day (shown above).

The "perfection of warmth, snugness, and comfort" that was the Haworth Parsonage parlour in which Charlotte Brontë wrote.

Contemporary writers profiled who are of particular interest to Victorianists include the novelists A. S. Byatt (Possession), Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith) and Colm Tóibín (The Master); the biographer Michael Holroyd (Bernard Shaw, vols. 1-4); and the historian Eric Hobsbawm (The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, and The Age of Empire).

Salmagundi #7

2008-07-16T06:41:00.004-06:00

Steampunk music? Hmm. Take a listen.

Times reporter Hannah Betts (left) plays Victorian housemaid for 24 hours under the supervision of English Heritage and lives (barely) to tell the tale.

Robert Downey Jr. will play Sherlock Holmes in Guy Ritchie's upcoming film of the same name. Reportedly inspired as much by Lionel Wigram's comic book as by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic stories, the film will begin shooting this October for a scheduled 2010 release.

The story of a murder case that gripped Victorian England has won Britain's Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction. Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or The Murder at Road Hill House tells the story of an 1860 child murder that tested the mettle of one of Scotland Yard's first detectives and inspired writers including Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle. Francis Saville Kent, the three-year-old son of a factory inspector, was stabbed in the chest and had his throat slashed. His body was found in a toilet at the family's country house. With jealous half-siblings, a dead mother who had gone mad, a cruel governess turned stepmother and a staff of gardeners, stable-hands, and servants in the mix, the crime scandalised Victorian society. Theories about the killing were debated at dinner parties and the murder fuelled the 1860s phenomenon of the "sensation" novel. Detective Inspector Jack Whicher, one of the original eight Scotland Yard detectives, was put in charge of the case and concluded that the murder was an inside job. Whicher was 45, shabby and grizzled, and the country went wild for him, but the case left him a broken man.

Jack the Ripper and the East End

2008-05-28T09:23:00.008-06:00

Via EDP24 News (24 May 2008):

With gore tours all the rage -- and near-permanent queues outside the revolting London Dungeon, our very own theme-park chamber of horrors -- it was inevitable that the East End should finally capitalise on its most despicable attraction. So a big welcome to jolly Jack the Ripper.

The Museum in Docklands, distant satellite of the wonderful Museum of London, has struggled to win big audiences to date. But all that is about to change with the blockbuster exhibition "Jack the Ripper and the East End." And quite beyond the thrills for those who enjoy being chilled, this saga remains a compelling story and in the new museum survey it is very well told.

Inevitably dramatic, the Ripper show puts the East End centrestage -- and, truth to tell, that can be even more shocking than the gruesome facts of the Whitechapel murders between April 3, 1888, and February 13, 1891. Although at least seven other murders and violent attacks on women have been connected to Jack the Ripper by various authors and historians, only five victims are universally attributed to a single serial killer: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelley -- the degree of mutilation becoming more marked with each cutthroat killing.

With exhibits such as Charles Booth's meticulously drawn poverty maps, previously unseen photographs of late-Victorian Whitechapel, and oral history recordings from local residents growing up at the time of the murders, the Museum in Docklands display shines a piercing light into East End slums and the grim lives of their inhabitants. It also reveals how the sensation of the murders shocked public opinion and galvanised politicians into finally doing something about the hellish slums in the shadow of the world's richest city.

We follow the tale through police files, newspaper reports, and letters from members of the public both well-intended and malicious. Before our forensic era -- and with such things as criminal profiling and fingerprinting poorly understood or else unknown -- the detective hunt used a range of pseudosciences, philosophies, and superstitions, including spiritualism. The scapegoating of immigrants, and Jews most particularly, was a dire diversion in an investigation that famously saw no killer, or killers, convicted. In view of the diligent savagery of the knifeman (or men), lunatics, medical students, doctors, and butchers were also targeted. Bloodhounds were brought in, but the police still had a great deal to learn.

The media too was in serious need of reform, with fierce competition between newspapers producing flights of fantasy that would shame even today's tabloids. The name of Jack the Ripper was signed on a letter sent to the Central News Agency, one of many thousands received by the police and the papers. Many were well-intentioned, but some were deliberate hoaxes. The worst letter "From Hell" contained half a kidney and the claim that the other half had been fried and eaten. Just such an organ was missing from the corpse of poor Catherine Eddowes. DNA testing would have solved that macabre mystery.

While "Jack" has been identified variously as a deranged member of the royal family, a Blackheath medic, and now, thanks to American crime writer Patricia Cornwell, the painter Walter Sickert, he exists in the same legendary world as Jekyll and Hyde and Sherlock Holmes. The new show splendidly sorts horrible facts from some frightful fiction.

"Jack the Ripper and the East End" is at the Museum in Docklands until 2 November.

[I'll be visiting this exhibition in September and will post my own review then. -- KT]

Shown here: An illustration from Le Journal Illustré (13 February 1891) depicting the murders of prostitutes by Jack the Ripper in London; image: Museum in Docklands.

Resources

Casebook: Jack the Ripper

"The Enduring Mystery of Jack the Ripper" (Metropolitan Police Service)

Survivor: Ujiji

2008-04-29T06:05:00.004-06:00

Couldn't stop laughing as I read this . . .

From The New York Times, 24 April:

"If we can presume that David Livingstone — he of the 19th-century expedition to find the source of the Nile — was the original survivor of popular imagination, then why shouldn’t Mark Burnett — he of the television phenomenon Survivor — find common ground with him?

"In an intriguing new example of unscripted television, Mr. Burnett will recreate the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley to find the missing Dr. Livingstone [shown here] in a series he will produce for the History Channel.

"'This is really a return to my roots,' said Mr. Burnett, who first broke through in television producing the nature race Eco-Challenge. 'This is taking the element of nature in the raw and adding the truth of history.'

"Abbe Raven, president of A&E Television Networks, which includes the History Channel, will announce the Stanley-Livingstone show next week when her company presents its programming plans for next season.

"The plan, as Mr. Burnett described it in a telephone interview, is to take five accomplished adventurers and set them off in Stanley’s footsteps, using only the technology available in the 1870s. 'That means old compasses, old maps,' Mr. Burnett said.

"But the team will otherwise be contemporary. 'They’re not dressing up in the clothes of the old days,' Mr. Burnett said. The adventurers will not be named for a while, though Mr. Burnett did disclose that one will be 'a well-known, serious journalist.' That replicates Stanley, who Mr. Burnett noted, 'was a newspaper guy looking for the big score.' He said he would try to document lesser-known facts about the journey, including 'whether their motives were pure or whether it was partly about ego.'

"And, of course, 'Did Stanley really use the words ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'

"The expedition will start, as Stanley’s did, in Zanzibar, where the team will take on supplies and probably include the typical scene with 'the local African guide warning these interlopers,' Mr. Burnett said.

"The team will trek 700 miles into territory that Mr. Burnett said 'has not really changed that much' and where lions and Cape buffalo roam.

"'I think one of the big questions will be: Are we as tough as they used to be?' Mr. Burnett said. If we are, he intends to come back with further expeditions. 'I’d love to do Ghengis Khan,” he said. “Or Hannibal. Imagine crossing the Alps today with elephants.'"

Victorian Things: Stained Glass Window by Henry Holiday

2008-04-18T07:18:00.005-06:00

"Moses Leaving the Court of Pharaoh," a stained and leaded glass window by Henry Holiday (1839-1927), was created in honor of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in 1891. A larger copy of the same design was among the first windows installed in St Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia.

The window is illustrated in A. L. Baldry's Henry Holiday (London, 1930). Baldry notes that Holiday (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) first travelled to America and Canada in 1890 where he "found many admirers who gave him the heartiest welcome, and where commissions sufficient to keep him busily engaged for a long time were offered him."

Having established his own glass works in January 1891, Holiday indulged his interest in Egyptian art and the life of ancient Egypt with the design for his memorial to Lee. The window may be intended as an allegory of Lee's reluctant abandonment of the Union, which had trained him, in order to serve as a leader -- and ultimately as general -- of the Confederate Army. Another version, without inscription, can be seen at Ponsonby Church, Cumbria.

The window is 111 cm high by 55.5 cm wide (approximately 3' 7" by 1' 9"). Formerly the property of guitarist Jimmy Page, it sold at a Sotheby's auction in March for £22,100. Click on the image to see an enlargement.

Resources:

Holiday's Stained Glass Windows in Cumbria

Victorian Things: Embroidered Panel by Walter Crane

2008-04-18T07:10:00.012-06:00

The design of this embroidered wool panel by Walter Crane (1845-1915) originates from one of the artist's illustrations for the children's book The Story of The Tempest from the Play of Shakespeare Retold by Alice Spencer Hoffman published in London in 1894 (shown below).

The eight famous engravings included in this book had appeared the year before as an unbound portfolio in 650 numbered copies and were sold as a separate art collection signed by both Walter Crane (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) and the printer/engraver Duncan Dallas.

Measuring 85 cm by 113 cm (approximately 2' 9" by 3' 8"), this panel shows Miranda and Prospero in Act I, Scene 2. Prospero's line "By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune / Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies / Brought to this shore" appears at its foot. Click on the image to see an enlargement.

Resources:

The Wonderful World of Walter Crane (Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester)

Walter Crane, Reminiscences (London, 1907)

Isabel Spencer, Walter Crane (London, 1975)

Victorian Things: Tiles by William Burges

2008-04-18T07:07:00.016-06:00

Today seems like an excellent day to bring a few beautiful examples of Victorian art to your attention. Herewith the first of three new posts in my ongoing "Victorian Things" series.

This stunning thirty-piece tile panel by William Burges (1827-1881) for W.B. Simpson & Sons was created around 1880. (We've met the eccentric "parrot-keeping, rat-hunting, opium-eating Freemason" Burges before: here's my post on a wine decanter he designed in 1865 and his connection with guitarist Jimmy Page.)

Burges designed these earthenware tiles, each 15.5 cm square and hand painted in shades of green, blue, and white, for Castell Coch, one of the residences of the 3rd Marquess of Bute, where they were installed in the drawing room fireplace. The panel includes twelve tiles depicting the signs of the Zodiac and eighteen border tiles featuring roundels, bands, and stylized flowers. Apart from the Castell Coch tiles and another set at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, this panel is the only complete set known to exist. Photographs of the tiles in situ can be seen in J. Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream (1981, pl. 163), and David McLees, Castell Coch (1998, pp. 35-36).

The panel sold at a Sotheby's auction in March for £28,000.

Click on the image for an enlargement.

The Return of King Arthur

2008-04-16T06:10:00.010-06:00

The last and (some say) greatest work by Edward Burne-Jones, The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon (detail shown below), has returned to the UK from Ponce, Puerto Rico, for the first time in 40 years.

This enormous painting, measuring over six metres in width, is on loan to Tate Britain through March 2009, along with Frederic Leighton’s masterpiece Flaming June (1895), from the Museo de Arte de Ponce while its galleries undergo renovation. These important paintings will be shown alongside other masterpieces of late-Victorian art from the Tate Collection.

Often described as Burne-Jones's magnum opus, The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon was originally commissioned by his patron, George Howard, Earl of Carlisle, to hang on a wall in the library of Naworth Castle. It was started in 1881 and Burne-Jones (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) worked steadily on it for 17 years -- even moving into a studio large enough for the purpose -- but died before it was complete. The painting became increasingly autobiographical for the artist as he withdrew into himself. Toward the end of his life he wrote, “I need nothing but my hands and my brain to fashion myself a world to live in that nothing can disturb. In my own land I am king of it.”

Following the artist’s death the painting passed to a neighbour of Burne-Jones’s whose descendants, John and Penryn Monck, sold the work at Christie’s in April 1963 to Don Luis Ferré, Puerto Rico's governor and founder of the Museo de Arte de Ponce. Even at a time when Victorian art was unfashionable, the sale was considered a significant loss to Britain.

Flaming June (shown at left) by Leighton (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) was last on display in the UK in 1996. It's one of the artist’s final works and shows a woman as she sleeps in the heat of the Mediterranean sun. The themes of sleep, death, and unconsciousness were important to both Burne-Jones and Leighton.

Related links:

"King Arthur Comes Home: How a Key Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Painting by Edward Burne-Jones Ended Up on a Caribbean Island" (New Statesman / BBC Radio 4)

"Pre-Raphaelite Painting of Arthur Returns, Temporarily, to Britain" (Guardian)

"A Visionary Oddity: Fiona MacCarthy on Edward Burne-Jones" (TATE etc)

Where to Find the Pre-Raphaelites (via 24 Hour Museum)

"Never Was Known Such a Wonderful Year!" ~ 1851

2008-04-15T06:15:00.017-06:00

London theatre managers must have been thrilled when they learned, in 1849, that the capital would host a "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations" in two years' time. They eagerly anticipated a steep rise in attendance (and box office receipts) as visitors from all over the world poured into London.

Yet almost without exception, theatres lost business during the first few months the Exhibition was open. They simply couldn't compete with the riches on offer at Hyde Park. From May to July 1851, as theatre historian Richard Foulkes has noted, the Exhibition emerged as the clear victor in this battle, "absorbing [both] the public's appetite and its financial capacity." Things turned around in mid-July, however, as the steady stream of tourists from the English provinces turned into a torrent; all places of public amusement benefited from the increased traffic on city streets, including the theatres.

To capitalize on the Exhibition's popularity, some managers offered plays, revues, and burlesque-extravaganzas on Exhibition themes or short pieces set at its magnificent purpose-built home, the Crystal Palace. The texts of many of these ephemeral works are now accessible online thanks to The Victorian Plays Project at the University of Worcester, which has produced a digital archive of selected plays from T.H. Lacy's Acting Edition of Victorian Plays (1848-1873).

Among the treasures available in PDF:

Novelty Fair; or, Hints for 1851 (1850), in which a character called "1851" (who exclaims "never was known such a wonderful year!") presents tableaux of previous historical events and explains why the Great Exhibition will trump them all: "The Brighton Pavilion was famous of old / But twenty of it, our Pavilion will hold / With its square miles of canvas, its acres of ground / 'Twill take one hard walking, a month to get round." The figure of Britannia ("With useful arts henceforth our fight shall be / And not with troops on shore, or ships at sea") and the British Lion take center stage.

Apartments, "Visitors to the Exhibition May Be Accommodated" (1851), which premiered at the Princess's Theatre two weeks after the Exhibition opened; a travelling salesman returns home to find that every nook and cranny of his house has been let to unusual visitors from all over the world (a theme often taken up by the comic serials, including Punch; click here for John Leech's classic "No. 1, Crowded State of Lodging-Houses").

The Exposition: A Scandinavian Sketch (1851) in which Odin, Thor, Freya, and other assorted mythological worthies, led by a character called "The Spirit of the Age," visit the Exhibition and promptly find much to amuse (and annoy) them.

The Mandarin's Daughter, Being the Simple Story of The Willow-Pattern Plate (1851) reflected the high level of public interest in the Exhibition's China Court; household items imported from the Far East were widely available -- and wildly popular -- in London.

Shilling Day at the Great Exhibition (1862), a one-act farce of mistaken identities that takes place at the Crystal Palace.

Racial, ethnic, and national stereotypes are on full display in these works, giving the reader an uncensored taste of the times in which they were created. Puns and topical allusions to contemporary events and personalities fly thick and fast.

Shown above: John Absolon (1815-95), "Part of the China Court" (1851), watercolour and gouache over pencil on paper, Victoria & Albert Museum. Because China did not respond to the invitation to submit work to the Exhibition, the China Court comprised samples from the stock of a number of importers of Chinese goods, including Hewett & Co. of Fenchurch Street.

Resources:

Richard Foulkes, "Charles Kean and the Great Exhibition," Theatre Notebook, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2004): 141-153. Foulkes argues that the theatre successfully harnessed the English public's fascination with the past to an educational role for itself, thereby attracting new audiences and enhancing its respectability and status within Victorian society.

The Great Exhibition Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Watercolours of the Great Exhibition, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Blunt Talk About Queen Victoria

2008-04-14T06:10:00.006-06:00

The New York Times recently interviewed actress Emily Blunt about her upcoming turn as Queen Victoria in the film Young Victoria. (You can read my previous posts about the movie here: 11 February 07, 16 February 07, 23 February 07, 4 March 07, and 13 October 07.)

NYT: ". . . You just finished playing the young Queen Victoria, where you had to wear a corset."

Blunt: "It is painful to wear a corset for 15 hours a day. They only loosen you up for lunch, and you would think that you would lose weight, but somehow you don’t. Movie sets are like 30 people grazing all day, eating sandwiches."

NYT: "Does the corset help you to get in character?"

Blunt: "Absolutely. You immediately feel regal. In this movie, we tried to combat the stuffy costume-drama approach. We see the private side of Victoria, when she was young and rebellious. She had a very overprotected childhood — she wasn’t allowed to walk down stairs without someone holding her hand. But she had a great sense of her position: at 10, she told her governess, 'I will be good.'"

NYT: "Did you have to learn proper royal manners?"

Blunt: "We had an etiquette coach on the set at all times. He is very close to the royal family, and he watched everything we did and said. He wanted us to be correct but vivid: after all, the royals go to the toilet, they have sex, they are human beings."

Above -- A scene from Young Victoria: Blunt with Rupert Friend as Prince Albert.

Desk Bound

2008-04-11T19:31:00.016-06:00

Via Reuters UK:

"The desk where Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations and his final correspondence hours before his death (shown at left) will be sold at auction in June, according to Christie's.

"The writing desk and chair from the study of his Gad's Hill residence near Rochester, Kent, was passed on by descent to Christopher Charles Dickens and his wife Jeanne-Marie Dickens. She then donated them to the Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London, with which Dickens had a close association, so that they could be sold to raise funds.

"The items, included in the Christie's valuable books and manuscripts sale on 4 June, are expected to fetch £50-80,000. [Read the Christie's press release here. -- KT]

"'Charles Dickens was a champion of the poor and needy and an enthusiastic patron of Great Ormond Street hospital in its early days,' says Jeanne-Marie Dickens. 'My husband shared his ancestor's desire to help the disadvantaged and when I became aware of the fundraising needs of Great Ormond Street children's hospital, I knew that I had to give the desk and chair to them.'

"Dickens was an early patron of Great Ormond Street, and was a friend of its founder Charles West. The hospital also benefited from the support of other famous British authors including Peter Pan creator J.M. Barrie and Oscar Wilde. In its early years, Great Ormond Street would organise fundraising events including the Annual Festival Dinner, where Dickens and Wilde both spoke.

"According to the hospital's Web site, it was an appearance by Dickens in 1858 that helped it overcome a funding crisis and expand its bed capacity to 75 from 20.

"'We need to raise 50 million pounds every year to help provide world class care to very ill children and their families -- this gift will help us do that," says Charles Denton, executive director at the hospital children's charity.

"According to Christie's, Dickens wrote Great Expectations and a number of other late novels and short stories at the mahogany writing desk (shown above in a contemporary illustration). The auctioneer quotes the memoirs of Dickens' eldest daughter Mamie Dickens saying that on the evening of 8 June 1870, Dickens wrote letters 'and arranged some trifling business matters' in the library where the desk stood. He went for dinner and collapsed after suffering a stroke, and died the following day aged 58."

--------

[Earlier this month, Christie's New York sold a portion of the Kenyon Starling Library of Charles Dickens. A presentation copy of Oliver Twist inscribed to William Harrison Ainsworth sold for $229,000 (£115,656) -- a record price for a Dickens presentation copy at auction. -- KT]

Related link:

"Authentic Furnishing" (humorous blog post by Ross Rosenberg at Ectoplasmosis!)

Salmagundi # 6

2008-04-02T18:05:00.007-06:00

Time for another round-up . . .

It's the year of the Victorians at Blenheim Palace (left), home to the 11th Duke of Marlborough and the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. Though 20 April, visitors can try their hand at Victorian games in the Pleasure Gardens (croquet, hopscotch, quoits); over the May Bank Holiday, they can take part in a reenactment of a Victorian reenactment of a medieval jousting tournament that will also include storytelling, falconry, and archery. An exhibition of the work of Henry Taunt, the celebrated Oxford-based photographer (1842–1922), will be held in May and June.

Kathryn Hughes discovers a treasure-trove of rare Victorian courtship manuals in the Cambridge University Library Tower.
"Capable of being tender and unguarded, as well as worried and wound tight, [the Victorian bourgeoisie] muddled through the maze of desire and protocol, hoping not to look too foolish in the process," she notes. "In other words, they aimed for the romantic best but prepared for the worst. And, to help them on their way, they were not too proud to buy a book to tell them what to do." See, the Victorians were just like us! Read more at "Secrets of Cambridge 'Porn' Library Revealed" in the 26 February Telegraph.

For a mere 65p, you can enjoy a quint- essentially Victorian experience in Saltburn-by-the-Sea in northern Yorkshire. Redcard & Cleveland Borough Council will reopen Saltburn's Victorian Cliff Lift, one of the most popular attractions in the Borough, on 5 April. Last year, more than 103,000 visitors used the lift, which links Saltburn Pier with the town. First opened in 1884, it's now the oldest water-powered lift system using original technology in Britain. Postcard image above via the Huntcliff History Club, a student group at Huntcliff Secondary School in Saltburn, which has put a number of historical photos of the lift online as part of a class project.

And finally, not Victorian, but suggestive to anyone interested in the methods of historical narrative, is Shirley Dent's recent blog entry "How Graphs Gave Us Harry Potter." Dent uses Charles Joseph Minard's "carte figurative" of Napoleon's misadventures in Russia in 1812 as a point of departure to discuss how "at the very point in history where the modern novel takes shape, change across time comes to be the object of quantitative enquiry and depiction." A poster of Minard's graphic hangs near my desk; it reminds me while I'm writing that stories can be told in many ways and encourages me to strive for clarity and precision. The poster can be purchased here.

Sensationalizing the Victorians

2008-03-27T07:03:00.001-06:00

Love and sex during the Victorian period are about to get the Channel 4 treatment. From The Sun, 26 March 2008:

"The 'prudish' Victorians' obsession with sex is to be revealed in a new Channel 4 season.

"Victorian Passions will include actor Rupert Everett retracing the journeys of sex-mad explorer Sir Richard Burton [left] who brought the Kama Sutra to Britain. It will also reveal writer Charles Dickens’ adulterous affair with a woman 22 years his junior and the real-life tale of the forbidden, kinky love of a Victorian gentleman and his working-class maid.

"Victorian Sex Tourist sees Everett embark on a voyage of discovery from the brothels of Bombay to Egyptian dancing girls visited by Burton in the nineteenth century.

"A C4 spokesman said: 'Burton – an infamous explorer and sexual whirlwind – is one of Rupert’s greatest heroes. He was anathema to many Victorians as he brought us the Kama Sutra and the Arabian Nights, books which shocked society and sealed his reputation as 'Dirty Dick.'

"Dickens’ Double Life looks at how the author’s life was driven by a passion for actress Ellen Ternan which began when he was 45 and continued until his death aged 58. During that time, Dickens - who was compared to Christ on his death, according to C4 - may have fathered two illegitimate children who died in infancy.

"Upstairs Downstairs Love chronicles the taboo romance of barrister Arthur Munby and his maid Hannah Cullwick, who eventually married. They celebrated their love with explicit photos of sexy master/slave role-playing, fetishes, and boot licking.

"The season begins in June."

Mmmm. Can't wait. I imagine this will wend its way to America in the not-too-distant future. I haven't been able to determine whether any actual historians were consulted in the making of the series.

Face to Face with the Victorians

2008-02-22T07:10:00.024-06:00

A fascinating new exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York City lets viewers come face to face with Victorian poets, painters, novelists, playwrights, and illustrators.

"Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection" opened yesterday and runs through April 26. It draws on the extensive collection of first editions, presentation copies, authors’ correspondence, and works of art and design assembled over the last 30 years by Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow at the University of Delaware's Morris Library, and is curated by Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Delaware.

The exhibition features portraits of dozens of well-known figures, including George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and John Singer Sargent, along with pioneering children’s book authors and illustrators such as E. Nesbit and Kate Greenaway. Many of these are rarely seen images, such as the unpublished sketches of themselves that Rudyard Kipling and Aubrey Beardsley included in letters to friends; the comical drawing of William Morris that the painter Edward Burne-Jones added to his guest-book; and Max Beerbohm’s savage caricature of Oscar Wilde’s head (shown here).

The exhibition also includes photographs and drawings of many lesser lights whose work was important in advancing British art and literature: people like the feminist novelist Olive Schreiner, the Catholic poet Alice Meynell, and the artists Walter Sickert and William Rothenstein.

"Looking at portraits, as Lord Palmerston told his Victorian contemporaries, was instructive and uplifting," says Stetz in the preface to the lavishly illustrated companion book. "There was something to be learned from the features of those who had accomplished significant achievements; the distinction of their minds and spirits would be written on their faces, and viewers would be moved to self-improvement by contemplating their expressions."

Whether circulating by means of posters, books, newspapers, magazines, cards, and advertisements, or hanging on the walls of art galleries and private homes, images were everywhere during the Victorian period. As this exhibition makes clear, the public quickly learned to "read" portraits -- to glean information about the class, the economic success, and the temperament of the persons depicted. When looking at pictures of writers and artists, however, what spectators most longed for was visual evidence of that elusive thing called “genius.” It was up to the makers of the images, therefore, to provide what audiences wanted and to create visible signs of genius, just as it was up to the subjects of the portraits to compose themselves and their surroundings in a way that would send desirable messages.

If you are interested in Victorian portraiture, I highly recommend the following online resources: Roger Vaughan's enormous gallery of Victorian and Edwardian portraits; the Victoria and Albert Museum's photography collection, begun in 1852; and the Heinz Archive and Library at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Shown here: Oscar Wilde by Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956); pencil, ink, and watercolor, c. 1894-1900. Estate of Max Beerbohm. Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

The Muslim Community in Victorian Surrey

2008-02-06T06:47:00.000-06:00

During my research on representations of Islam and Islamic cultures in the Victorian period, I've come across many fascinating details of daily Muslim life in nineteenth-century Britain.

Shown above is the Shah Jahan (or Jehan) Mosque in Woking, Surrey, northern Europe's earliest surviving purpose-built mosque. It was commissioned in 1889 by Hungarian-born linguist and scholar Dr Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840-1899; shown at right; Wiki entry here). Leitner was educated in Istanbul (after the death of his father, his Jewish mother had married a Protestant missionary stationed there). A master of several languages, he became Professor in Arabic and Muslim Law at King's College London at the age of 23; a few years later he was named Principal of Government College at Lahore (now the University of the Punjab). On his return to England in 1881, he established an "Oriental Institute" in Woking to prepare Asian students for careers in the professions and to offer language training to Europeans wishing to live and work in the East.

To provide a place for the Institute's students to worship, and funded by generous donations from Nawab Mahbub Ali Khan (the Nizam of Hyderabad) and the Begum Shah Jahan of Bhopal, Leitner acquired land near the Institute and set about building a mosque to a design by English architect W. L. Chambers.

English Heritage described the mosque in a 2004 report: "Although small in scale, the building is dignified and well proportioned, square on plan, with a wide, welcoming portal flanked by apsidal pavilions providing facilities for ritual ablutions. The interior [shown at left], under a spherical dome, is simple, with calligraphic decoration its principal enrichment. Gold stars dot the interior of the dome, and the principal focus of the small space is the niche in the east wall, the mihrab, indicating the direction of Makkah [Mecca]."

While the students of the Institute were the most regular worshippers, the mosque also served the wider Muslim community, including (reportedly) Queen Victoria’s Indian attendants.

The mosque fell into disuse after Leitner's death in 1899; it remained closed until 1912, when it was acquired and reopened by Indian lawyer Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din of Lahore. It has been the centerpiece of Muslim life in Woking ever since.

I invite Peeper readers with a special interest or expertise in nineteenth-century British Islam to get in touch with me.

Resources:

"Dr. Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–1899)," Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore (UK)

"Woking's Muslim Heritage," Woking Borough Council

The Surrey History Centre, Surrey County Council

Cutty Sark Hits the (Lottery) Jackpot

2008-01-25T05:10:00.000-06:00

Good news for the Cutty Sark, the Victorian tea clipper devastated by fire last May: the Heritage Lottery Fund has increased its grant to the restoration project by £10 million.

"The Heritage Lottery Fund has been an incredible partner of the Cutty Sark Trust and we are deeply grateful for this extra support," says Richard Hamilton, chairman of the trust. "The support from the public and our other partners has also been enormously encouraging. The Trust has secured £30 million against the projected cost of £35 million to realise this exciting and innovative project at the heart of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site."

The world's last surviving sixteenth-century warship, the Mary Rose [see comments to this post], received £21m from the lottery fund, which will be used to build a museum around it in Portsmouth.

Death of a Queen

2008-01-22T05:47:00.000-06:00

Today marks the 107th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria.

Shown above (click to enlarge): The queen's cortège on its way from the Albert Memorial Chapel at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, to the mausoleum at Frogmore House in the castle grounds (4 February 1901). Victoria is buried there next to Prince Albert.

The procession was captured on film by Hepworth and Co. as it passed Marble Arch earlier in the day; to view the 30-second clip, visit the "Moving History" website.

Shown below: Effigies of the queen and her consort on the tomb at Frogmore.

History Carnival # 60: Galloping into the New Year

2008-01-06T05:15:00.000-06:00

Step right up, folks, to the 60th edition of History Carnival. The Victorian Peeper is pleased to host this month's round-up of the world's best history blogging.

Our pace will be set by the lovely (if somewhat demented-looking) Tidman horses that are part of the beautifully restored Jubilee Steam Gallopers carousel (c. 1895) operated by Carter's Famous Royal Berkshire Steam Fair, which is currently encamped at Warwick Castle as part of "A Very Victorian Christmas" (through 6 January). For more information about Victorian carnivals, visit the Fairground Heritage Trust.

The next History Carnival will be published in February by Marcin Wilkowski at Historia i Media, a Polish blog that explores the place of historical thinking in media, especially the Internet. This is the first time that the English-language Carnival will be hosted by a non-English-language blog. Submit your entries here.

Now on with the show!

The Ancient World

Three depictions of the "Ancient World through Maps" are discussed at Varnam, including a map of the world made in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller, the last surviving print of which was recently purchased by the Library of Congress for a cool $10 million; the Tabula Peutingeriana, the only known Roman map of the road from Spain to India; and a 7,000-year-old rock painting on a cave wall at Jaora in India that may be a map of the cosmos.

At group blog The Agonist, Sean-Paul Kelley describes the challenges of researching the campaign of the Han emperor Gao Tzu against the nomadic Xiongnu in 200 BC and requests assistance with Chinese histories of the Han and T'ang eras. In "A Meditation on Central Asia" he takes issue with the standard histories of the settlement of Central Asia, noting the migratory impulse that gave rise to a lust for "the next horizon, the next pasture, the next home."

Many anthropologists believe that heating food became commonplace a few hundred thousand years ago, when Neanderthals developed earth-oven cookery to help them cope with an ice age. In "Cooking and Human Evolution," however, Greg Laden is convinced that "there is sufficient evidence in the early Paleolithic [era] of fire" and that "controlled use of fire may well date to nearly 2 million years ago." In a separate post, Laden considers "Ancient Jade Exchange in Southeast Asia," noting a new study that analyzes the practice among the prehistoric cultures of Taiwan and the Philippines and those of the early Iron Age across a large swath of the South China Sea.

The Middle Ages

In "Some Thoughts on Chaucer, History, and Englishness" at In the Middle, J J Cohen describes how the study of Chaucer has been embedded in an educational system that owes much to British colonial encounter: "The fact that [Chaucer] monsterized Jews and Muslims, that his vision of Britain (or perhaps more accurately, his complete lack of interest in attempting to envision Britain) means that he has created a world almost empty of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish content, did not disturb scholars for whom timelessness and universality were synonyms for a contemporary kind of exclusive Englishness."

Seventeenth Century

The history of America's first Thanksgiving has an interesting twist, according to Ian Welsh at The Agonist, who notes that the Puritans who were helped by the Indians resisted, to the point of excommunication, the destruction of their benefactors.

Eighteenth Century

Romeo Vitelli at Providentia tells us about the 1725 raid on the Holborn molly-house of Margaret ("Mother") Clap. Molly-houses were secret meeting places for homosexuals during a period of English history in which the punishment for those convicted of sodomy was death.

New Hampshire historian Christopher Benedetto is interviewed in a post about the 1739 hangings of Penelope Kenny and Sarah Simpson at Executed Today, a blog that provides an "arresting view of the human condition across time and circumstance from the parlous vantage of the scaffold." Kenny and Simpson were publicly hanged for “feloniously concealing the death" of their illegitimate newborn children. The post is one of a four-part series on the spectacle of public hanging in America.

The notorious female "pyrates" Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who live on as part of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme park ride, are profiled by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon at Scandalous Women.

Over at Philaahzophy, Aahz tries to get to the bottom of the infamous tea tax that inspired the Boston Tea Party and helped set the American colonists on the road to revolution.

Mrs. Mecomber's curiosity about a big hunk of syenite rock at the side of a road sets her on a trail of discovery that leads to an Oneida chief who played a role in the American Revolution in "People of the Turning Stone: Skenandoah Boulder, Oneida, NY" at New York Traveler.

The Library Thing Blog announces that Thomas Jefferson's library has been added to Library Thing, an online service that enables users to catalog their books. Now Jefferson's author cloud, tag cloud, author gallery, and stats page are available for all to see. You can also find out how many books your personal library has in common with our third president's.

Nineteenth Century

At Scandalous Women, Elizabeth Kerri Mahon relates the true story of Marie duPlessis, the woman immortalized by Alexandre Dumas fils as Marguerite Gautier, La Dame aux Camélias, and later by Verdi in La Traviata. The mistress of a series of prominent men from her adolescence, duPlessis parlayed her beauty into a life of luxury.

Lapham's Quarterly Online presents a brief biography of the American suffragist and pacifist Carrie Chapman Catt, who worked relentlessly for the recognition of women's rights at the national level and for human rights at the international level.

At Victorian History, Bruce Rosen gives us an account of the adulteration of food and drink in Victorian England and notes its ubiquity: "Among the items adulterated and the adulterants used were alum, added to flour in the production of white bread; sloe, ash, and elder leaves used to adulterate tea; peas and beans in ground coffee; alum to brighten wine; Brazil wood to colour Port; and sawdust and filbert husks to make red wine more astringent." Rosen also describes the Princess Alice steamer disaster on the Thames in 1878 that killed 600 people and the penny gaff, favored form of entertainment of the lower classes.

The Victorian Peeper describes New Year's Day charitable traditions in Victorian England, including Queen Victoria's annual gifts of meat, coal, and clothing to the poor of Windsor.

Twentieth / Twenty-First Centuries

Mark A. Rayner recovers "The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Race to the South Pole Edition)" at The Skwib ("May the explorer with the best beard win!") This post nabs the Governor's Award for Best Use of Humor in a History Blog for December 2007.

In "Real Progressives and War" at the group blog Progressive Historians: History For Our Future, badger admires the political courage of the early Progressives (e.g., Sen. Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin and Sen. George Norris of Nebraska) in opposing U.S. entry into World War I: "LaFollette and Norris chose to vote and speak their conscience rather than choosing a course of political expedience or ambition."

The rather lackadaisical manner in which the British used to protect their nuclear arsenal from the clutches of a lunatic bent on world destruction is described by David Tiley in "An Invidious Suggestion" at Barista. While American and Russian weapons were protected by tamper-proof combination locks that required the input of a code transmitted by military leaders, British bombs apparently could be armed simply by inserting a bicycle lock key into a switch and turning it 90 degrees.

The public's fear of a Dr. Strangelove scenario (and uncertainty over the mental stability of Barry Goldwater) was exploited by the Lyndon Johnson campaign in 1964 with "the most notorious 60 seconds in advertising history": the "Daisy" television spot in which a young girl picks the petals off a flower while counting out of sequence just before an adult voice-over interjects a "military" countdown which is followed by stock footage of a nuclear explosion. The group blog CONELRAD, which focuses on Cold War popular culture, examines the spot in detail in "Daisy: The Complete History of an Infamous and Iconic Ad."

A little-known aspect of mid-twentieth-century film history is illuminated in the Blue Skelton Production Blog profile of influential Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, who made more than 50 films (33 of which survive). Many of Ozu's films dealt with subjects related to marriage and family in Japanese society.

In "Indonesia’s Economy in the 1990s: From Miracle to Crisis," Timothy Moreland offers an assessment of how Indonesia survived a financial crisis that began in 1997 and was exacerbated by severe drought. He concludes that "a corrupt and controlling overseer of the economy can lead to drastic problems," "a reliance on foreign investment and a growing foreign debt demands an economy to secure the trust of foreigners that the debt will be repaid," and that "even the most promising economies can be headed for a fall."

In "Jinnah or Saladin" at The Resurgent, Bilal Khan considers the current state of affairs in Pakistan, arguing that the country and its problems "are part and parcel of the problems that the Ummah is facing as a whole" and that "an honest investigation to find out the real cause of the War on Terror . . . would end at one problem, one issue, and one crime – one city and its capture – the city of God – Jerusalem," the site of historical and contemporary conflict between East and West.

Michael Meckler draws on the language of the founders of the American republic to respond to Washington Post op-ed writer Charles Krauthammer's assertion that presidential candidate Mitt Romney is being scrutinized for his Mormon faith in an unfair and unprecedented manner.

In "American Parallels" at The Agonist, Ian Welsh notes that the processes that created the great empires of England, Spain, Rome, and Athens hold lessons for the United States: "America, breathless with greed, is teaching others how to defeat it . . . It is this generation’s task to renew the tree of liberty and keep the American experiment going."

At CounterPunch, Peter Linebaugh asks "Can Liberty be Bought and Sold? A People's Penny for the Magna Carta." Noting that the Magna Carta was cited by name 407 times in 195 U. S. Supreme Court cases between 1790 and 2005, he considers whether the document's commodification and privatization (through, for example, the recent Sotheby's auction of a 1297 version), and the denial to Guantánamo Bay prisoners of the due process rights it contains, have compromised an essential, common sense of liberty.

In "Virtual Protest in China" at Frog in a Well, Alan Baumler reports on a digital sit-down strike undertaken by Chinese gamers, who seem to have learned a thing or two from the UAW.

Exhibitions

Natalie Bennett reviews the Louvre exhibition "Chant du Monde, L’art de l’Iran safavide (Song of the World: The Art of Safavid Iran)" at My Paris, Your Paris. The curators note that the visual arts and the written word are closely linked in Iranian culture, where the ultimate theme is the world’s grandeur, a divine creation. Bennett describes the evolution of styles in Iranian art produced between 1501 and 1736, starting with the stunning tile mosaic “Banquet of Letters in the Garden,” which is "a picture of courtly, civilised life in a garden in which each leaf has its place" and concluding with “The Goldfinch and the Narcissus,” a work from the mid-seventeenth century inflected with the conventions of Western nature painting.

History Blogging

In "On Blogs and Frogs"at Digital History Hacks and Cliopatria, William J. Turkel wonders what bloggers can learn from the coqui, tiny Puerto Rican frogs whose mating calls are made more effective by "a special neural mechanism that follows the periodic calls made by other creatures, predicts windows of relative silence, and allows them to blast their own calls into the gaps." Imagine, he writes, "the blogger of the future, augmented by an artificial system that monitors discourse, predicts gaps and pops in your contribution when and where it's most likely to be cited. Over time, the system learns what you are capable of, and becomes more effective at getting your message out."

Cliopatria's History Blogroll seems to grow larger by the day, as does Wikipedia's "Academic Blogs in History" list and the History Blog list at BlogCatalog. Check them out if you'd like to expand your history blog-reading horizon!

Teaching History

In "Deep History?" at Revise and Consent, Alun Salt takes issue with Daniel Lord Smail's argument that history is taught as if it begins in Mesopotamia around 6,000 years ago.

EHT at History is Elementary describes a lesson plan using Arnold Friberg's painting The Prayer at Valley Forge to help students understand the concept of controversy and notes that "conflict has considerable value for educators and students when the controversy is managed constructively [by the teacher]. Controversial questions . . . can help to structure debate in the classroom and reinforce conflict resolution skills."

California high school teacher Larry Ferlazzo provides his list of the best social studies websites of the year, all of which are suitable for English-language learners, and notes a new series of humorous online animated movies inspired by historical events.

Libraries and Archives

In "Burning Books, Libraries, and Archives" at Reading Archives, Richard J. Cox reviews Mark Y. Herring’s Fool’s Gold: Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library (2007) and Lucien X. Polastron's Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries Throughout History (2007). "Just as some lamented the move from scroll to codex and others from manuscript to printed book, we have individuals lamenting the shift from print to digital information . . . Librarians, archivists, and other information professionals need to work together to ensure that the new digital forms represent enhancements to the way society can tap into its legacy of information and evidence."

Victorian Lives: John Lovell, Gypsy and Tinker of Frying Pan Alley, London

2008-01-04T05:51:00.000-06:00

From The Times, 5 January 1843:

"Death of an Old Gypsy. – Last week John Lovell, aged 80 years, expired at his residence in Fryingpan-alley, Clerkenwell. The deceased was well known in the metropolis for the last 50 years as a Gypsy and travelling tinker; and in more recent years, being afflicted with apoplexy, he lost the use of his left side, and paraded the streets in the vicinity of Lincoln’s-inn, calling out, “Poor old man! – pots and kettles to mend.” His appearance was most deplorable, and he received sums of money from charitable persons daily, supposing him to be in great distress. After his decease a sum of money amounting to 700l. was found in various parts of his room, which he had hoarded up, amongst which were several pounds’ worth of farthings.

"On Sunday last he was respectably buried in Clerkenwell burying ground by some relatives. The deceased had a large family of children; one of his sons was executed at the age of 17 years, at the Old Bailey, with John Henley, the captain of the celebrated West-end fair gangmen, Hampstead, for desperate highway robberies at that fair; two others of his sons were transported, for robberies, for their natural lives. The deceased, some years ago, resided at Paddington, and was the associate of the Lees and Coopers, gangs notorious for horse-stealing. Lee, who was at that period termed the King of the Gypsies, being convicted of horse-stealing, suffered execution. The deceased, when a young man, was a noted prize-fighter."

Shown at top: Frying Pan Alley, which was part of a notorious East End slum district in the nineteenth century, c. 1900. It was once home to a number of braziers and ironmongers who hung frying pans outside their premises as a way of advertising their businesses . . . hence its colorful name.

Shown at bottom: Detail of Charles Booth's 1898 Poverty Map of London. Frying Pan Alley runs between Middlesex Street and Bell Lane, to the right of and slightly below the "e" in "Bishopsgate" on the map.

Resources:

"An Exploration into 'Jack Ketch's Warren,'" in James Greenwood, The Wilds of London (1874) (at Lee Jackson's Victorian Dictionary website)

Charles Booth Online Archive (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Henry Mayhew, "Of the Street-Sellers of Manufactured Articles in Metal," in London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 1 (1851)

"Flashman" Creator Dies

2008-01-03T05:48:00.000-06:00

George MacDonald Fraser -- journalist, historian, screenwriter, and creator of the dashing Victorian anti-hero Harry Flashman -- has died aged 82. If you're a regular reader of this blog and haven't read at least one of the 12 Flashman novels, hie thee to your local bookstore today.

The Guardian, 3 January 08; Guardian profile

The Independent, 3 January 08

The Times, 3 January 08

International Herald Tribune, 3 January 08

Press Association, 3 January 08

BBC, 3 January 08

The Times, "The Thinking Woman's Scoundrel," 6 January 08

Business Standard (India), "Flashman's Last Stand," 8 January 08

The Economist, 10 January 08

John Sutherland mourns "a true Brit" whose Flashman novels "articulated that mixture of cynicism, shame, and pride that contemporary Britons felt about Victorian values and Great Britain."

Andrew Klavan provides an excellent overview of the Flashman series in the Boston Review (originally published in 1995): "Flashman's adventures, by virtue of an endless and hilarious collection of mischances, include nearly every major military engagement between the British empire and its subjects, and between the American settlers and the natives they displaced and enslaved. He lives, in other words, at the heart of western imperialism at its height. And because he is amoral, because he seeks out neither justification nor blame, he is able to view the events of that enterprise without guilt or sanctimony, without sentimentality, patriotism, idealism, self-love, or shame. He witnesses both conquest and atrocity with neither pride nor remorse. For victor, for vanquished, and for the dead he bears nothing but a sort of sneering dispassion. He is, I mean to say, the perfect historian. Indeed, he is the voice of history itself."