MetaFilter posts tagged with victorian

I will teach you, Walter, why I carry thorns in the moon

taz — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:46:48 -0800

In an intriguing blog entry the mysterious jasminembla muses about the man in the moon, and his relationship with thorns, linking finally to a most remarkable collection of sourced and footnoted Victorian Moon Lore authored by a Rev. Timothy Harley, 1885. In the "Man in the Moon" section, we learn that, indeed, the man in the moon has been traditionally linked with thorns, variously being exiled to the moon for stealing a bundle of brambles, strewing brambles on the path to church to hinder the pious, or cutting wood on the Sabbath, among other infractions - and that this folktale has existed since at least 1157, when an English abbot asks, in Latin, "Do you not know what the people call the rustic in the moon who carries the thorns? Whence one vulgarly speaking says, "The Rustic in the moon / Whose burden weighs him down / This changeless truth reveals / He profits not who steals." Furthermore, no less a personage than Shakespeare has mentioned the thorny situation of the poor man in the moon... and most interesting, perhaps, the rather convincing theory that the bramble-burdened man in the moon may very well be an older "Jack" of Jack and Jill fame, who did not steal, but was stolen by the moon, along with his sister. There's much, much more in the Moon Lore collection, including The Woman in the Moon, The Hare in the Moon, The Toad in the Moon, other moon myths, moon as deity, superstitions about the moon, and a serious examination of the question "is the moon inhabited?"

Christened an Engelmacher, or "angel-maker"

Countess Elena — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:23:40 -0800

NURSE CHILD WANTED, OR TO ADOPT -- The Advertiser, a Widow with a little family of her own, and moderate allowance from her late husband's friends, would be glad to accept the charge of a young child. Age no object. If sickly would receive a parent's care. Terms, Fifteen Shillings a month; or would adopt entirely if under two months for the small sum of Twelve pounds. This kindly nineteenth-century advertisement had a hidden meaning. If a woman paid her adoption fee to a baby farmer and handed over her infant, no one ever had to worry about that baby, ever again. There were, of course, baby-farmers who took in children as actual providers of childcare, but the words "baby farming" acquired a very different sense. Without reliable contraception or any safe or legal abortions, poor unwed mothers in the English-speaking world of the nineteenth century had hardly any choices. Employers could turn out a girl "without references" -- quite the end of some work, such as domestic service -- if there was any hint of immorality about her. In a time of high infant mortality, prior to the reliable institution of birth certificates, it was unsettlingly easy for a newborn child to disappear. A combination of neglect and opiate-laced patent medicines would do for such children, and the formality of a burial could be foregone. Sometimes the children were simply smothered outright. Amelia Dyer, of Reading, was hanged in 1896 for the murder of the infant Helena Fry, whose corpse was dragged from the river by a boathook, but she may have murdered dozens more. Minnie Dean, the only woman ever executed in New Zealand, was a baby farmer, convicted of the murder of Dorothy Edith Carter. The bodies of two other infants were found in her garden. American examples can be found in the free 19th century archives of the New York Times (all PDFs), although some women branded "baby farmers" by the reporters of the old Times seem more like victims of circumstance.

Figures of Anachronistic Action

Eideteker — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:19:46 -0800

Sillof's Workshop features steampunk/gaslight versions of some pop culture's most-loved heroes, as well as dioramas based on Star Wars scenes.

beautiful old illustrations

nickyskye — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:27:04 -0800

Packed full of galleries of beautiful illustrations by Maxfield Parrish, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham and others with prints one can buy of any illustration, Artsy Craftsy includes a sumptuous collection of Victorian Fairies illustrations. The site also has the illustrated Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, illustrations of cats in fairy tales, Magic Cats, and a selection of beautiful free ecards as well. To find a free ecard from the illustrations, one can click on the caption for that illustration. For example on the Dulac page, if one scrolls down the page to the caption, "Firebird" and clicks on that, it can be sent as an ecard. A good fairy ecard page.

"Ethel patted her hair and looked very sneery."

Iridic — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:13:08 -0800

The bearer of this letter is an old friend of mine not quite the right side of the blanket as they say in fact he is the son of a first rate butcher but his mother was a decent family called Hyssopps of the Glen so you see he is not so bad and is desireus of being the correct article.
The Young Visitors, or, Mister Salteena's Plan (written 1890, published 1919) is a remarkable little novel that offers an atypical perspective on the recreations of the late Victorian upper classes and boasts some of literature's most comprehensive descriptions of clothing. Its author was Daisy Ashford, a nine-year-old girl.

A forgotten gem of the rust belt

pieisexactlythree — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:38:12 -0800

The Buffalo State Hospital is a vast complex of moldering Victorian buildings, sitting right in the middle of a residential neighborhood of Buffalo. It is also an architectural gem, not only by Buffalo standards, but for the nation as a whole. It is one of the largest and most complex commissions of New England architect H. H. Richardson, who is known for promulgating his unique, heavy looking stone Romanesque variant of the then dominant Queen Anne style. The Buffalo asylum’s grounds were planned by landscape architect (and designer of Central Park) Fredrick Law Olmsted. On a side note, Olmstead later died in another asylum which he had landscaped! Like many Victorian mental institutions, it is vacant, and has fallen into disrepair. Despite the grim image these buildings hold on the modern imagination, the Buffalo state hospital and many like it represented a significant advance in the care of the mentally ill. The buildings’ linear arrangement is an excellent example of the Kirkbride Plan for mental asylums. The narrow buildings allowed maximum light and air. Their linear arrangement allowed the patient to progress from one end of the building towards the administrative center, as he or she became more ready for discharge from the hospital. After decades of neglect, the building appeared doomed, until a lawsuit by a local preservation group forced the state to honor its commitment to preserve and reuse historic structures, to the tune of approximately $70M. The Richardson Center Corporation was formed to oversee the restoration and re-use. In May 2007 the RCC invited a panel from the Urban Land Institute to undertake a study to determine a potential use for the site. Their preliminary recommendations [PDF] envision it as the crown jewel in Buffalo’s wealth of historic buildings, housing a history center classrooms, and businesses. The Richardson-Olmsted center would be a hub for architectural tourism.

In China, it is a common thing to stumble over the bodies of dead babies in the streets.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:26:47 -0800

In the 19th century, English author Favell Mortimer wrote several books describing various countries to children. Apparently she didn't travel much. Favell Mortimer also wrote "The peep of day, or, A series of the earliest religious instruction the infant mind is capable of receiving" and "Reading without tears", a childrens' orthography primer. Wikipedia.

Wain's World: How the Artist Went Insane When the Cat Got His Brain

jonp72 — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:37:04 -0800

Louis Wain became one of the most famous British illustrators of the late Victorian and Edwardian era after trying to cheer up his wife Emily by drawing portraits of their pet cat, Peter. In addition to publishing a popular children's book about kittens, he was a founder of the U.K's National Cat Club who was instrumental in promoting the Cat Fancy movement, which encouraged Britons of all classes to view cats as lovable pets instead of household pests. Unfortunately, after Wain's wife Emily died of breast cancer, Wain gradually went mad due to psychosis and late onset schizophrenia, ending up in London's notorious Bethlehem Hospital (the etymological origin for the word bedlam). While at Bedlam, Wain continued to draw, but his cat portraits transformed into pure geometric abstraction and psychedelic fractals, but some see harbingers of madness in cryptically titled works, such as Early Indian Irish and The Fire of the Mind Agitates the Atmosphere. For more insight on Wain, check out this 1896 interview and this short film dramatizing the progression of Wain's schizophrenia through his art.

I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.

jessamyn — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:11:22 -0800

Julia Margaret Cameron did not begin her photography career until she was 48. She lived on the Isle of Wight in two adjacent cottages linked with a gothic tower that she called Dimbola Lodge. Many of her captivating photographs are of The Freshwater Circle, a group of artists and intellectuals centered around Alfred Tennyson, whose poems Idylls of the King, she illustrated with her photographs. Cameron's portraits of contemporaries -- Charles Darwin, George Frederic Watts, Edward Eyre, Thomas Carlyle, Julia Jackson (mother of Viginia Woolf) -- became significant because they were sometimes the only existing photographs of her subjects.

Hairy Mementos

jonson — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:21:16 -0800

Things Gone By is an antique jewelry dealer specializing in the category of "mourning jewelry"; items worn in memory of the dead, usually involving locks of their hair & other materials. The mourning items are not limited to jewelry, as they also feature a gallery of mourning artwork, again made with the hair of the beloved deceased.