Surprises

Jo here wondering about surprises and discoveries about history. We certainly don't know everything about any time, even if we feel as if we've researched it down to the tiniest detail.

The Regency period is particularly ripe for that being so short -- a decade, give or take. Given 20 years plus (the time I've been actively researching the period) you'd think we'd know it all, but no. There are the mysteries, such as exactly how a ball was organized and exactly how they did the waltz when, and then the things we stumble across that completely surprise us.

I have a blog where I toss down the strange things I come across while researching. A while ago I posted something a little unusual about coach travel, and someone left a detailed description along with a picture. You can read that here. Basically it's a coach with compartments. Now this description is on the Continent, but Louis Simond records the same thing in England in the Regency period.

This is one of these huh? items, because that's the only such record as best I know. I've read a lot of books on travel and visited museums of transportation etc and never seen such a vehicle in England. So, did Simond confuse England and France? Or have we just not found the corroborating evidence yet?

The picture of the sedan chair is just for the heck of it, but I do find them a neglected form of transport in novels. They could be very convenient in crowded city streets, and they also could be brought into the building at each end so the use was not exposed to the weather. My hero, Robin, in A Lady's Secret, uses one a couple of times because he has a wounded leg, but it was the normal way to get to court because the chairmen would be armed and armed footmen would go as escort. All those jewels, you know.

Have you come across things in books that surprised you? (And that were true, of course.)

Have you stumbled across bit of research that surprised or startled you?

What about the strange bit here Casanova on highway robbery. It seems shooting a highwayman could get you hanged. Good job Vidal didn't know that!

Or an early 19th century book on torpedo warfare. Torpedo War .

Or, look at this snippet view of trades in 18th century Sheffield. (Which I happened to be researching for the MIP.) Trades in Sheffield.  Any there surprise or mystify you? I'm not entirely sure what a horn turner produced, but it's nice to know there was a bowling green.

Share your surprises.

I'm just going over the copy edited manuscript of A Lady's Secret and discovered there that Shanks' pony is just that. I'd written Shank's pony and the c-e corrected it. I checked, and there it is. But I don't know yet who Shanks was.

Oh, and I did send a newsletter out recently. Some of the news is already old, but it does have a wonderful panorama photograph that my husband took recently.

See newsletter here.

Jo :)

Comments

[Ingrid]

Wouldn't a horn turner make articles from animal horn, cow's horns for instance, the same way a wood turner makes articles from wood?
You can usually find some, often very ugly, things made from animal horn at antique markets.

[Ingrid]

On sedan chairs: The BBC is now showing a series based on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford. It's set in 1842 and one of the characters, mrs. Jamieson, is always being carried up and down the main street in a sedan chair.
Apparently the series is a great success, so no doubt it will soon be shown in your part of the world too.

[Laura Vivanco]

>"I'd written Shank's pony and the c-e corrected it. I checked, and there it is. But I don't know yet who Shanks was."<

The OED has got "Shanks' (or Shanks's) mare, pony, etc.: one's own legs as a means of conveyance" listed under the entry for "shank": "That part of the leg which extends from the knee to the ankle; the tibia or shin-bone. Also (now jocularly) the leg as a whole; chiefly pl. one's legs."

[Sherrie Holmes]

Jo, I have a list of occupations in Carlyle in 1811, and there's one occupation that has me puzzled: whitesmith. I've never heard that term before, but I wonder if it has to do with whitening clothes? (Although another occupation listed was "bleacher")

[Laura Vivanco]

Sherrie, according to the OED, a whitesmith is:

"a. A worker in ‘white iron’; a tinsmith. b. One who polishes or finishes metal goods, as distinguished from one who forges them; also, more widely, a worker in metals."

[kay]

Sherrie: There were also Lime Burners, Hemp Dressers and Cordwainers. A good place to go for interesting jobs is the old census records.

[Maggie Robinson]

I have a collage reproduction I picked up in London that features propaganda (somehow that doesn't sound quite right) posters from WWII. On it is a shoe with a horse's head and legs stating " Go by Shank's Pony--Walk short distances and leave room for those who have longer journeys." It was issued by the ministries of transport and labour and nat'l service. The other posters on the collage all have edifying suggestions for secrecy and frugality.

Jo, I thought your interview was delightful. You looked very glamorous!

[Jo Beverley]

Jo here.

Yes, Ingrid, I suppose the horn turner made things from horn, but I was having trouble imagining what at that time. But I suppose there were things like horn inkwells, perhaps even horn cups still.

I hadn't thought of Shanks being a play on the part of the leg -- duh! -- and I suppose the capitalization is just a word play, too.

I know what a shank is, though, because there are ham shanks and lamb shanks. :)

On strange names for things, when I was growing up, we called tap water "corporation pop."
Does that make sense to everyone here?

Thanks about the interview, Maggie. It did come off all right, didn't it?

Jo

[Laura Vivanco]

>"On strange names for things, when I was growing up, we called tap water "corporation pop."
Does that make sense to everyone here?"<

I've never heard it before, but I think it makes sense. I'm assuming that's "corporation" as in the local council, and "pop" as in "lemonade"?

[Kalen Hughes]

I was surprised by the lace stocking that Elf wears in SOMETHING WICKED. I'd never seen or heard of one. A long while later I stumbled across an extant one that had belonged to Madame de Pompadour. I so remember thinking "Dang, Jo Beverley was right. Cool!"

[Patricia Rice]

1842! Now that surprises me. I knew sedan chairs were quite popular in the Georgian era when the roads were rough and sloppy and carriages pretty unrefined, but I hadn't realized they survived as transportation this late in the era, especially when other forms of public conveyance were available then. Cool!

[maryjoputney]

Great topic, Jo! I remember how cool I thought it when I first read that Beau Brummel would have his sedan chair carry him right into a house so his clothing would remain immaculate. :)

>>On strange names for things, when I was growing up, we called tap water "corporation pop."
Does that make sense to everyone here?<<

Here in Baltimore, the Patuxent River is a major water source, and tap water is sometimes called a "Patuxent cocktail." :)

And yes, you did a good job in that interview. It will probably give you a spike of sales on AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE. :)

Mary Jo

[Jo Beverley]

Laura, yes. Tap water. I see that form is common elsewhere, Mary Jo.

My father was born at the end of the 19th century and in working class areas then water might still have been from communal pumps, so tap water would be a luxury for many. Interesting how quickly things change.

On strange occupations, my career before we left England was Youth Employment Officer and part of the job was going around workplaces and learning all about the jobs. I worked a few years in the Potteries (around Stoke-on-Trent, where most of the pottery firms still are.)

This job had gone by the time I was working there, but there really was a job called "sagger-maker's bottom knocker."

The sagger is a frame in which greenware is stacked to go into the kiln, and constructing and filling it correctly was crucial. The bottom knocker rapped the whole thing to make everything settle just before it went into the kiln.

My profession was a great opportunity to gather obscure information.*G*

Glad the lace stockings turned out to be correct, Kalen. I can't remember now whether I'd come across that or was just guessing. The inspired, informed guess is the author's greatest skill.

Jo :)

[Susan Wilbanks]

I was recently surprised, in reading a compilation of some of Wellington's correspondence and dispatches from the Peninsular War, to come across one instance where he used "gotten" instead of "got." I probably wouldn't have even noticed if the book's English editor hadn't put a great big "sic" beside it. But I've had it pounded into my head by a critique partner that "gotten" was a big honking obvious Americanism that was gone from British English by the 18th century. I've eradicated it from my British-POV fiction to such a degree that I catch myself using the British version in my everyday guise as an American office worker. And so it was a surprise to see a "gotten" in the middle of an undoubtedly 19th century document written by an undoubtedly British man.

[Susan Wilbanks]

And having posted that, I wanted to say that I do realize just what a nitpicky geek I've turned into to get all worked up over a "gotten." You should've heard what I was thinking when I stumbled upon the conjugation in question. There I was, on a city bus, wanting to grab my neighbor, a stranger lost in her own book, and say, "Look here! He said 'gotten'! Wellington, as in the Duke of. He's not supposed to do that, don't you know, because he's English, and they don't, haven't for centuries now."

I restrained myself. I try to keep my special brand of insanity hidden as best I can, but it tends to pop out on blogs...

[Jo Beverley]

LOL, on gotten, Susan. It is a testy subject.

It seems rare in the Regency, and even in the 18th century in my experience, so I really don't know why it was sometimes used.

I just did a quick search in Google Books, which is great for such things, and my impression is that it became increasingly less common as the 18th century progressed and increasingly reserved for legal contexts, where it might have had specific meanings. It was always in the context of very or slightly archaic speech which most of us wouldn't use in a novel we were writing today.

A search for "got" in the early 19th century produced a lot more results, and in more modern speech patterns.

I know it seems wrong to American ears to use got in some situations, but it's really grating to English ears. The real point, however, is that it can _always_ be written around. So that's the best thing to do.

Jo :)

[Jane George]

Sagger-maker's bottom knocker. Gotta luv it.

My son named his cat Skibbleshanks. Although Kibble-shanks would be more appropriate.

I really enjoyed Jo's scene in My Lady Notorious set in a second-hand clothing seller's. Prior to that, I hadn't really thought about such a thing in the Regency.

[Susan Wilbanks]

I tried for a few pages to look for "gots" so I could see if there was something unusual about the context and/or usage of the "gotten," but I gave up because I found it too hard to look for such a simple word. It's almost like paying attention to pronouns or articles.

[RevMelinda]

Jo, I must confess that I've been worrying about you today. Have you been battered with wind and rain? Is Victoria handling it well?

And something that surprised me in a novel--I'd have to say automatons, which you have used so brilliantly in your Malloren books, and which I had absolutely no notion of before that. Oh, and lemonade, too!

[Susan/DC]

As for odd occupations, right now (well, not this actual moment) I'm listening to an audiobook of Alan Rickman reading Thomas Hardy's "Return of the Native", and Diggory Venn is a reddleman (hope I've spelled that correctly, as I've only listened to it and haven't seen it written down). He sold red clay that was used to dye wool, and it has permeated his skin so that he is red too. I'd never heard of this before, and it certainly is a striking image.

[Edith]

Here in New York, city dwellers used to call tap water: "Guillani's (sp?) best."

Now, it's "Bloomberg's."

And as for "Shank's mare" - I first saw it in a Heyer book.

[Jo Beverley]

RevMelinda, we're fine here. We've had heavy rain and wind, but nothing drastic and today has been relatively pleasant. Certainly warmer.

The automatons are interesting and one trigger for my interest is one in the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, just down the road from where some friends live. They have a swan there that eats a fish.
http://www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk/collections/swan/

I've just been going over the early regencies that will be out in Lovers and Ladies and Harry Crisp in The Fortune Hunter has an interest in automata, so I was thinking about them back then.

He's fiddling with a dancing lady that is very like one I mention in A Lady's Secret and I decided to leave it, even though I hadn't intended any connection. Who knows where such things migrate in a couple of generations?

Jo :)

[Kathy/ME]

Jane, Skibbleshanks is a wonderful name for a cat. Eliot would have approved. Does your son often produce such felicitous names?
"Writing around" gets more points with me than dogged correctness which doesn't strike the ear well.