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Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

A Fashion For Vice

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Before I get to the smutty talk, let me apologize for last Wednesday. I was sick with the ague. Ick. Anyway, this week’s post is about another book although it might be fairer to call it a pamphlet. The Georgian Bawdy House, by Emily Brand.

Here with, my by the moment review:

Oh my god. No. Way. Ewww.
One sexual myth of the early part of the Long 18th Century: amorous embraces could revive the dead. Right. How is that not necrophilia?

Viper-Wine. OK. That’s awesome. Drink viper-wine and you get frisky, even if you’re ::coughcough:: older.
Of course I googled it. Here.

Vinum Viperinum
Viper juice
of dried Vipers two Ounces
of white Wine three Pints
Infuse with a gentle Heat for a Week and then strain the Wine off
There has been some Dispute whether living or dry’d Vipers are best Viper Wine or whether a cold or hot Infusion is preferable. The college here has preferr’d dry’d Vipers and a warm Infusion; but the medicine is not of Consequence enough to be worth disputing about. I believe the Virtues it is pos’d of are very inconsiderable. A Medicine has been advertis’d in Town the Name of Viper Wine which is said to have had very extraordinary Effects such as might be from a Tincture of Cantharides which upon Examination I find it really to be.

Okayyyy.

:::Boggle::: There is a picture of ladies examining dildos, with testicles and hair. Ohmygod.

Oh. Hey. The Duke of Wellington. Boxing. Plenty of Regency era stuff here.

Kitties!!! (It’s a print with fighting cats.)

Oh….. I get it. Very funny. Snort.

My sweet honey, I hope you are to be let with the Lodgings!
No. Sir. I am to be let alone.

Boy, I wish this was on my iPad. Because the font is TINY!

Themed amatory entertainment. Hoo boy. Really? All righty.

Mollyhouses were meeting places for homosexual intercourse.

A lot of this makes me sad. The average age of a London prostitute: 16-24. As with everything, some women were wealthy — while they were still young, but so many other women were just trying to make ends meet.

I will continue with this next week, I think.

Posted in Former Riskies, Research | Tagged , | 6 Replies

More Vice

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Last week I did a “review” of The Georgian Bawdy House” by Emily Brand. I continue this week. The previous post.

For next week, by the way, I am lining up an awesome post….

Pregnancy was definitely an issue for prostitutes, since it’s an issue for all fertile women who have sex. This book lists remedies that persisted among women until the advent of the birth control pill. My father, who was a resident in San Bernardino when abortion was still illegal, including in California, once told me about what women did to themselves to attempt to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. I can tell you this: pick your era prior to the pill and legal abortions: self-administered toxins and poisons, mutilation, abandonment, and infanticide.

I’ve blogged here before about my copy of Mysteries of London (1834-1844) features an engraving of a young woman, come far down in life, who has just killed her newborn. I know we sometimes romanticize the Courtesan, but she, too, was at risk of pregnancy, and there were few foolproof methods of contraception.

With professional opportunities severely restricted for most women, while there was demand for sexual services, virtue continued to be overthrown. (31)

Two brothels that catered to the wealthy were Jane Goadby’s establishment and Charlotte Hayes. Notions of women leading men to their sexual doom abounded. Women did go to brothel’s in search of their husbands. The book also contains a really excellent photo of an early 19th century condom, that looks to have been put over a cylinder. This gives a much better view than the more usual laid out flat photos.

Men and women alike had to worry about venereal disease, with all the accompanying dangers of remedies that, as we know, could not possibly have been effective.

Mr. Harris’s infamous “Harris’s List” of prostitutes sold 250,000 copies.

This I hadn’t heard before: “Mother Douglas” had footmen give condoms to the men before they went upstairs.

There were women who went to brothels to indulge themselves. According to Brand, they peeped though windows and selected the gentleman of their choice. Brand says these women had to pay much more for their pleasure.

And I will leave you there, because the rest get depressing, when the discussion turns to all the ways women were punished, and the men? They weren’t.

This is an interesting, fact-filled book with a nice list of references.

 

Posted in Former Riskies, Research | Tagged | 3 Replies

Stories of Gods and Heroes. . .

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A few days ago I was procrastinating marketing myself on social media– oh all right, I was on twitter when someone tweeted that Bullfinch’s Mythology was free on Amazon.

Well, hot diggity! FREE!

So I clicked on through and took a look and yes, Bullfinch’s Mythology was indeed free. It  was a public domain copy put out by the Gutenberg Project. There was a comment by one Richard Martin to the effect that he’d gotten several inquiries about the book from concerned people, and that yes, the book was indeed Bullfinch’s Mythology in its entirety, but it was not the 1991 Harper-Collin’s version that he had edited and commented on.

In 1991, Martin was an associate professor of Classics at Princeton. It was a really gracious comment, and it made me click around until I found the 1991 edition and could read about that, and then, DESPITE the existence of a completely free version of the myths, I bought the 1991 version. Its was only available used and it wasn’t all that cheap, but a well documented resource is gold.

The book, a library edition in excellent condition, arrived today and right there on the front it says:

  • The Age of Fable
  • The Age of Chivalry
  • Legends of Charlemagne

I was immediately cast back to my childhood, when I loved mythology, and gods and creatures lived in my head, and in those stories, there were often large glimpses of women who did things. Goddesses were as fearsome as gods.

This book has a list of proverbial expressions, illustrations, dictionary and index, a bibliography, and maps and charts. You’d think that alone is reason to celebrate the acquisition, but you know what? That’s not it.

It was this:

I opened to the table of contents and very first heading is this:

Stories of Gods and Heroes

Don’t you, right now this minute, want to pick up a book (paper or not) and have an adventure?

I do.

Posted in Former Riskies, Research, Writing | Tagged , , | 2 Replies

Diving into Regency London

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I’ve pulled out my copy of The Epicure’s Almanack for this post. This will appear to ramble a bit, but it’s only an illusion, K?

Rambling….

The Blind Beggar of Bethenal Green described as “a house of entertainment” Let’s put that in oh, riiigght. Entertainment.

tossing up piemen “that attend executions, fairs, boxing-matches, and other polite assemblies.” Category: local color (apparently it was a thing to toss a coin and allowing the vendor to call heads or tails. Free pie if the customer won. If the vendor won, he kept the money and the pie.) This was also called “tossing the pieman.”

Plympton’s Pastry shop: Category: local color. Although we think of pasty shops as a place to buy things with sugar in them, Plympton’s sold sweet and savory pastries.

A ham and beef shop: Category: puzzling. Why ham and beef? Why not ham, beef, and veal?

Eating House: Category: vernacular. Not a restaurant, but an “eating house.” Even so, some of these eating-houses had accommodations upstairs. One displayed a variety of meats in the window.

Hyde Park Coffee House, Hotel and Tavern: Category: Regency Starbucks. Located at 242 Oxford Street. Commanded a view of Hyde Park and the hills of Surrey

Copping’s Ham and Beef Shop: Category: less puzzling now. 178 Oxford Street. “A good mart for purchasing those articles, and tongues ready drest, by weight, to carry away with you, which you must do, since there are no eating-rooms attacheed to the shop. Mr. Copping has acquired fame by the sale of his excellent plum puddings.”

There’s more than Gunters!

The Prince Regent’s famous confectioner, Monsiuer Parmentier, had a shop (“emporium”) at No.9 Edward Street. At 29 Duke Street was the emporium of Signor Romualdo. The nobility ordered supplies from these two places. In this area [Mayfair] there are china and glass shops that on “a few hours notice” could “furnish a splendid equipage for tea and turn out, as well as all the moveables and ornaments for large rout parties.”

Our author, Mr. Ryland, in this book, is having us on. He describes a party at the Earl of Shrewsbury’s new, but empty, house. A party that, alas, did not actually happen as descried. The local emporiums, he says, completely furnished the house from a room ablaze with light — lots of chimney glass — and another “somber” room decorated so as to resemble an Acadian grove. “It was filled with orange and lemon trees in full bearing, myrtles, and a great variety of odoriferoius shrubs and plants, in part natural and in part artificial, tastefully disposed and arranged in gradins.”

I had to look up gradin, but it’s what you’d suspect: an arrangement of tiered seating– in this case for the plants.

Impressions

It makes sense, when you think about it, to have someone supply the china, glasses, and silverware for a large party. Otherwise, the family china might disappear, be damaged or broken. When I planned my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party, I found a place that would deliver the correct number of place settings, dishes, etc. And they came the next day to take away the dirty dishes, too. Boy, was that nice!

What I find fascinating about this is the dozens of clues about what London was like — A London I wish we saw more of in the pages of books. Eating-houses, dozens of “ham and beef” shops, where you might, or might not, be able to sit down and eat your purchase. And all around Mayfair, shops to cater to the wealthy. Things feel close together for us because, well, relative to what it can be like in the US, you didn’t hop in your car (or the metro) and zip across town and back to run your errands. You walked, rode a horse, or drove a carriage. For us, Regency London would be smaller in every way, more condensed and compact.

Ironically, I just moved my WIP out of London and into the countryside.

Has your vision of London changed at all?

Posted in Former Riskies, Regency, Research | Tagged , | 4 Replies

The First Third

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I’m working away at The Next Historical and I’m making progress. The story is starting to gel which, you know; :::Sigh of Relief::: This writing gig is hard work. Yesterday when I was reading through my current chapter one, I thought to myself, hey! This is pretty good! :::runs around cheering::::

I’ve hit the first third of the story when typically things are slightly less sucky and slightly more focused. It’s a good feeling.

I think I might have mentioned already that at first the book was set in London. I was reading a lot of my Epicure’s Almanack that the dog chewed on and I was all ready to start using some of that great research. But then I ended up moving the story to the country and so far no one is showing any sign of wanting—

omg, I just had a great idea! ROAD TRIP!!!!! They will travel somewhere…. and do something…. and exciting stuff will happen!!! And there will be hotel rooms and possibly shenanigans.

—to leave the country.

That does not mean my research was wasted because, as it turns out, this whole section I read on a totally wild, extravagant party that Ryder made up (it NEEDS to be TRUE!!!) has turned into this backstory-ish thing based on that and it’s working out well.

Next Week

Next week is RWA and some of the Riskies will be there, including yours truly. I will do my best to post.

What are your plans for next week?

Posted in Former Riskies, Research, Writing | Tagged , , | 4 Replies