Mini-Update (Week of September 21)

September 23 - How did platonic kissing get stopped in its tracks? Will the swine flu give it the kiss of death? Once a common part of greetings, it's now relegated to scenes from the French cinema and high-fashion caricature. Along with other varieties, "la bise," or cheek-to-cheek kissing, survives for the moment, despite recent warnings. A correspondent to Hone muses on this "obsolete custom," as it was once practiced in England:

It appears that, under the Tudor reigns, 'the women of this country took great offence if they were not saluted in the form of kissing.' [...] The 'embrace' was not left off, even between men, in the days of James I.; for the Spanish ambassador, being indisposed, it appears 'James visited him, and gave him a hearty embrace in bed.'

The correspondent has it on good authority that, in France, a friend or relation of any gender would resent not being greeted with a friendly kiss. So why did the custom die out in England?

The change of religion, from catholic to protestant, no doubt produced a great change in our national manners and habits, which our neighbors, still adhering to the old religion, have retained.

Before the Reformation, he surmises, "a very striking resemblance" would have been found between French and English habits, spectacles and pastimes. [YB]

Image from Current.com

Mini-Update (Week of September 7)

September 7 - Pining for the fjords? Beware, writes a correspondent on this day in 1825, of the Viriginia Nightingale and other painted birds for sale.

To the Editor of the Times

Sir,--I consider it necessary to inform the public, through your paper, that there is a fellow going about the town, (dressed like a painter,) imposing upon the unwary, by selling them painted birds, for foreign ones.

The trick consisted of showing a paper bag, and saying that he'd been working for a gentleman about to leave England for a foreign country. The gentleman gave the painter his birds, who in turn, would tell a small audience,

but I'm as bad as himself, for I'm going down to Canterbury to-morrow morning myself, to work, and they being of no use to me, I shall take them down to Whitechapel and sell them for what I can get.

Taking a bird out of the bag, he described it as 'a Virginia nightingale, which sung four distinct notes or voices.' Beautiful plumage, too: 'its head and neck was a bright vermilion, the back betwixt the wings a blue, the lower part to the tail a bright yellow, the wings red and yellow...the belly a clear green.' Money changed hands, all the birds were sold, and the fellow quickly departed.

In the course of an hour, continues the correspondent, a barber, a knowing hand in the bird way, who lives in the neighbourhood, came in, and taking a little water, with his white apron he transferred the variegated colours of the nightingale to [his white apron]. The deception was visible--the swindler had fled--and the poor hedge-sparrow had his unfortunate head severed from his body, for being forced to personate a nightingale.

A Licensed Victualler

Upper Thames-street [EDBv1]

Mini-Update (Week of August 31)

September 1 - Dark, rich colors fill the month. Saffron - and its butterfly - appear this month, and its stamens are dried into flat square cakes. The clown in the Winter's Tale, reckoning up what he is to buy for the sheepshearing feast, mentions 'saffron to colour the warden-pies.'

Wardens, a type of long-keeping cooking pear, were found at Cistercian Abbey of Warden, in Bedfordshire. Cooked in wine and nestled in a pie with saffron and ginger, the pears became a sweet filling.



Warden Pie

Take the fairest and best wardens*, and pare them, and take out
the hard cores on the top, and cut the sharp ends at the bottom
flat; then boil them in white wine and sugar, until the syrup grow
thick; then take the wardens from the syrup into a clean dish,
and let them cool; then set them into the coffin, and prick cloves in
the tops, with whole sticks of cinnamon, and great store of sugar,
as for pippins; then cover it, and only reserve a vent hole, so set
it in the oven and bake it: when it is baked, draw it forth, and take
the first syrup in which the wardens were boiled, and taste it, and
if it be not sweet enough, then put in more sugar and some
rose-water, and boil it again a little, then pour it in at a the vent
hole, and shake the pie well; then take sweet butter and rose-water
melted, and with it anoint the pie lid all over, and strew upon it
store of sugar, and so set into the oven again a little space, and
then serve it up. And in this manner you may also bake quinces*.

from "The English Housewife", Gervase Markham, Edited by
Michael R. Best, McGill-Queen's University Press, Canada,
1986, p. 104, #130 [YB]

Recipe from http://www.florilegium.org/

Image from http://www.tastesofbedfordshire.co.uk/

September 4 - Tricks for harvest-time include 'how to keep apples' - for up to a year - and an alternative to produce stickers.

For keeping apples, try the following:

Gather them dry, and put them with clean straw, or clean chaff,
into casks; cover them up close, and put them into a cool dry
cellar. Fruit will keep perfectly good a twelvemonth in
this manner.


For the cultivator of choice fruit, this trick may be handy, as a way around modern identification labels:

Let [him] cut in paper the initial letters of his name, or any
other mark he likes; and just before his peaches, nectarines,
&c. begin to be coloured, stick such letters or mark with
gum-water on that side of the fruit which is next to the
sun. That part of the rind which is under the paper will
remain green, in the exact form of the mark, and so the
fruit be known wheresoever found, for the mark cannot
be obliterated. [EDBv2]

Image from LAT's Emerald City Blog

Mini-Update (Week of August 24)

August 26 - As summer vacation ends, so does a life on this day. A pen in one hand and a sword in the other, Saint-Foix dueled mightily until 1776. His full name was Germain Francois Poullain de Saint-Foix, and was complicated as his name was long.

"In all seasons he slept upon a sofa, with no covering but a dressing-gown." Perhaps this explains his temperament: cranky one moment, good-humored the next. Early in life, he was a musketeer in the army. Even then, he wrote, and in time he completed twenty theatrical dramas, along with numerous essays - one of them, ruminations on the identify of the Man in the Iron Mask.


In society, Saint-Foix could be a nuisance. According to an anecdote published in 1843, while at a coffee shop, he noticed someone eating a custard with a piece of bread. "He exclaimed, 'What a wretched dinner!' and repeated the words till they drew the person's notice. A duel, as might have been expected, was the consequence, and Saint-Foix was wounded. Still he could not refrain from impudence. 'I own (he said) that you are brave ; but acknowledge, on your part, that it was a wretched dinner!' [YB]

Image from the Mystery Files

Mini-Update (Week of June 29)

June 30 - Talking heads abound on June 30. Before TV chatterboxes took turns skewering each other, St. Paul was martyred, via beheading, about now in the year 65. "As soon as the head was from the body," wrote a Romish writer, the head "said 'Jesus Christus fyfty tymes." Fountains of milk ran from the head, and somehow, lacking feet, the head also gave three leaps. A fountain also sprang from each jumping point. [EDBv1]

July 1 -
Now comes July, and with his fervid noon,
Unsinews labour. The swinkt mower sleeps;
The weary maid rakes feebly; the warm swain
Pitches his load reluctant; the faint steer,
Lashing his sides, draws sulkily along
The slow encumbered wain in midday heat.

A "swinkt" person is exhausted. Beat. Pooped.

July, once named Quintilis, got its new moniker from Mark Antony, who wanted to honor Julius Caesar - ruler of Rome and instigator of the new "Julian calendar." Eventually, his calendar was thought to be out of whack. Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582, introduced some corrections after it was noted that Easter didn't arrive when the spring equinox did. The Gregorian calendar has been adopted by most countries since then, while a few persist with the maddening Daylight Savings Time. [EDBv1]

Image from "The Past Beckons," Bittersweet Magazine

June 2 - A postcard picture:

A Morning's Walk in July

But when mild morn, in saffron stole,

First issues from her eastern goal,

Let not my due feet fail to climb

Some breeezy summit's brow sublime,

Whence Nature's universal face

Illumined smiles with newborn grace,

The misty streams that wind below

With silver sparkling lustre glow;

The groves and castled cliffs appear

Invested all in radiance clear;

O every village charm beneath

The smoke that mounts in azure wreath.

O beauteous rural interchange!

The simple spire and elmy grange;

Content, indulging blissful hours,

Whistles o'er the fragrant flowers:

And cattle rous'd to pasture new,

Shake jocund from their sides the dew. [EDBv1]

Image from Maison La Roque

Mini-Update (Week of June 22)

June 22 - What a mockery of democracy! Shall the results of a farce, dressed as an election, be allowed to stand? Yes, cried the citizens of Garrett.

Near Wandsworth, Garrett was a small village that hosted a wild event poking fun at all aspects of elections. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, candidates for the office of Mayor made ridiculous claims and promises. One famous mayor was Jeffrey Dunstan, a dealer of old wigs, who eventually lost his seat to Harry Dimsdale, muffin seller.

After several years of incumbency, and seeking to defeat his challenger, Dunstan pledged strict adherence to promises, as long as it was in his interest to do so. Among them, "to unmarry all those who choose it. This being a glorious opportunity for women of spirit to exert themselves, and regain their long lost empire over their husbands, I hope they will use all their coaxing arts to get me elected in their husband's place."

The pageant of foolishness was well attended; "a hundred thousand persons, half of them in carts, in hackney-coaches, and on horse and ass-back, covered the various roads from London, and choked up all the approaches to the place of election." Why such attention and attendance for a joke? Sir Richard Phillips suggests that famous actors of the day may have had a hand in this live example of political satire:

"I have indeed been told, that Foote, Garrick, and Wilkes, wrote some of the candidates' addresses, for the purpose of instructing the people in the corruptions which attend elections to the legislature, and of producing those reforms by means of ridicule and shame, which are vainly expected from solemn appeals of argument and patriotism." [EDBv2]

Image from the Numismatic Bibliomania Society's photostream

Mini-Update (Week of June 15)

June 15 - Seasoned dancers in Morris Code: turn, return, clap hands in front, back, and jerk the knee and foot alternately.

For June 1826, a letter presents an eyewitness account of morris dancing. At Rosoman-street, Clerkenwell, eight young men danced to the tunes emitted by pipe and tabor. "The dancers wore party-colored ribands round their hats, arms, and knees, to which a row of small latten bells were appended, somewhat like those which are given to amuse infants in teeth-cutting, that tinkled with the motion of the wearers."

Latten [horse-team] bells

Yes, these untutored clowns may not compare with professional acrobats, but do they not convey a sense of the "rural-born creature?"

Image from Weald and Downland Open Air Museum

June 16 - Some lines written at Ramsgate, composed at Willington-crescent ("a very pretty place, for either summer or winter residence"):

The East Wind

A summer sun in brightness glows,
But ah! the blighting east wind blows,
And weighs the spirit down!
All smiling is th' enlivening ray,
That tips with silvery tinge the spray,
O'er ocean's bosom thrown!

Yet, all inviting though it seems,
And tempts one forth to court its beams
I tremblingly retire:
For I am one who hate and dread
That eastern blast, and oft have fled
Its pestilences dire!

But the young shoots that round me rise
And make me old,--(though still unwise)
Feel no such fear as I
Brimful of joy they venture forth
Wind blowing west, south, east, or north,
If cloudless be the sky!

They tripping lightly o'er the path,
To them yet free from grief or scath,
Press on--and onward still,
With brow unwrinkled yet by care,
With spirit buoyant as the air--
They breathe at freedom's will

Where shipwreck'd seamen oft deplore
The loss of all their scanty store,
They rove at ebb of tide
In quest of shells, or various weed,
That, from the bed of ocean freed,
Their anxious search abide.

Proud and elated with thier prize,
(All eagerness with sparlking eyes,
The treasures home are brought
To me, who plunged in gloom the while,
At home have watch'd the sea bird's guile:--
Or, in a sea of thought,

Have sent my spirit forth to find
Fit food for an immortal mind,
Else of itself the prey!
And in th' abstraction of that mood,
Full oft I've realized the good,
We boast not every day.

Sometimes tho', with a courage bold,
As ever faced the arctic's cold,
I pace the Colonnade;
And then am soon compelled to beat,
And seek a cowardly retreat,
Within the parlour's shade!

Sometimes the place, warm shelter'd close,
Where Sharwood's decorated house,
From roof to step all flowers,
Shines forth as Flora's temple, where
Dominion falls to sea and air;--
Napoleonic powers!

There, snugly shelter'd from the blast,
My eyes right pensively I cast
Where famed sir Williams's bark
Lies moor'd, awaiting the time when
That Noah of citzens again
Shall venture on such ark:

But, ah! still round the corner creeps,
That treach'rous wind! and still it sweeps
Too clean the path I tread:
Arm'd as with numerous needle points,
Its painful searchings pierce my joints,
And then capsize my head!

So home again full trot I speed,
As, after wound, the warrior' steed;
And sit me down, and sigh
O'er the hard-hearted fate of those
Who feel like me these east-wind woes
That brain and marrow try!

Again upon the sea I look,
Of nature that exhaustless book
With endless wonder fraught:--
How oft upon that sea I've gazed,
Whose world of waters has amazed
Man--social or untaught.

And spite of all that some may say,
It is the place from day to day,
Whereon the soul can dwell!
My soul enkindles at the sight
Of such accumulated might;
And loves such grandeur well!

J.S. [EDBv1]

June 17 - Before giraffes strode the catwalks, one simply made clothes to fit. Purchased today in 1550 were several yards of wedding dress material. John Bowyer recorded the items, which themselves constituted a wedding present from him to his wife, Elizabeth Draper. Among the components:

-4 ells of of tawney taffeta for the Venyce gowne
-4 yardes of silk, Chamlett crymson, for a kyrtle
-One yard and a half of tawney velvet, to gard the Venyce gowne
-Half a yard of crymsyn satin, for the fore-slyves

Image from Adam & Dede's Wedding

Could it be that the practice of creating a truly unique wedding dress - something never to be worn at other gatherings - helped start a disposable culture? [EDBv2]

June 18 - "There was a sound of revelry by night...but hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!" A few lines from Byron to commemorate this day in 1815. The Battle of Waterloo arrives, and Napoleon's personal power is cut short. [EDBv1]

June 19 - Seems like only yesterday that the Magna Carta was approved by King John! Thus the rule of law was forced upon him by rebellious barons. [EDBv1]

June 20 - On this day in 1751, bringing home the bacon meant marital success. A year and a day after marrying, a couple could claim a side of pig - if they upheld their oath of domestic tranquility. John and Anne Shakeshanks won the prize and carried it home from the priory of Dunmow, Essex. The old oath went as such:

You shall swear by Custom of Confession,
If ever you made nuptial trangression:
Be you either married man or wife,
By household brawles or contentious strife,
Or otherwise in bed, or at boord,
Offend each other in deed, or word;
Or since the parish Clerk said Amen,
You wish't yourselves unmarried agen:
Or in a twelve moneths time and a day
Repented not in thought any way:
but continued true and just in desire
As when you joyned hands in the holy quire
If to these conditions without al feare,
Of your own accord you will freely sweare,
A whole Gammon of Bacon you shall receive,
And bear it henceforth with love and good leave.
For this is our Custome at Dunmow well known,
Though the pleasure be ours, the Bacon's your own.

The prize was first established centuries earlier, in 1111, but claimed only occasionally. It's still awarded today, every 4 years. Read all about it! [EDBv2]

June 21 - Is yesterday over yet? The longest day, June 21, kicks off summer with sunny verse:

Now cometh welcome Summer with great strength,
Joyously smiling in high lustihood,
Conferring on us days of longest length,
For rest or labour, in town, field, or wood;
Offering, to our gathering, richest stores
Of varied herbage, corn, cool fruits, and flowers,
As forth they rise rom Nature's open pores,
To fill our homesteads, and to deck our bowers;
Inviting us to renovate our health
By recreation; or, by ready hand,
And calculating thought, t'improve our wealth:
And so, in vigorating all the land,
And all the tenantry of earth or flood,
Cometh the plenteous summer--full of good. [EDBv1]