Tea in the Time of Cholera

I admit to being fascinated with the subject of how commodities, such as tea and spices, end up in my kitchen half a world away from the places where they were grown. On my bookshelf is a book called Nathaniel’s Nutmeg that I found fascinating. As the title suggests, is a book about nutmeg, specifically the spice from the Dutch possession of the island of Run that involves global intrigue between the Dutch and British empires.

Being a tea drinker, I will read just about any article or book about that subject. I wasn’t always a tea drinker. When I lived on the East Coast, I put away ten cups of coffee a day easily. My mother was a Maxwell House lady, “Good to the Last Drop,” and so was I. I know people are probably shuddering at the idea of instant coffee, but I loved it. But then I moved to Texas, the land of iced tea, and things started to change. Realizing that I was consuming an awful lot of caffeine, I switched to Sanka. (Do I hear more groans from the audience?) I hated it. Little did I know that when I quit on decaffeinated coffee that I had drunk my last cup of coffee and that was more than thirty years ago.

The Real King's Speech

Tony Grant of London Calling forwarded this BBC recording to me. This is the real George VI giving his speech to the people of Great Britain and the Empire beyond. It is at once heartbreaking to hear how he struggles through the speech, while at the same time, it is inspiring that he was able to conquer his fears and his stutter at a time when his  country needed him. Click here for the real King George VI's BBC speech.

Frost Fairs on the Thames

Frost Fair with St. Paul's Cathedral in the Background

In 1814, the last frost fair was held on a frozen Thames River, but while it lasted, Londoners had a blast! I have a post on this topic at Austen Authors today. I hope you will pop on over and read it and let me know what you think. Here is what I think: Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

Feast of Santa Lucia - December 11 in most Nordic countries

In the 1980s, my husband and I hosted an exchange student from Sweden, and he shared the custom of the Feast of Santa Lucia with us. Basically, it is light chasing away the dark.

From Wikipedia: St. Lucy/Lucia is one of few saints celebrated by the overwhelmingly Lutheran Scandinavian peoples (Danes, Swedes, Finns and Norwegians). The St. Lucy's Day celebrations retain many indigenous Germanic pagan, pre-Christian midwinter elements, and the practices associated with the day, predates the adoption of Christianity in Scandinavia, and is like much of Scandinavian folklore, and even religiosity today, based on the annual struggle between light and darkness.

The Nordic observation of St. Lucy is first attested in the Middle Ages, and continued after the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s, although the modern celebration is only about 200 years old. It is likely that tradition owes its popularity in the Nordic countries to the extreme change in daylight hours between the seasons in this region.

Americans Have Been Big Eaters at Thanksgiving for a Long Time*

Proclamation of Thanksgiving:  In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth. By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Although a proclamation of Thanksgiving was issued in 1863 by President Lincoln, it was not until December 26, 1941 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill into law making the fourth Thursday of November a national day of Thanksgiving. But long before those dates, Americans had set aside a day in late November to give thanks for a multitude of blessings. The turkey and all the fixings, the visiting, and church attendance that we have come to associate with a modern Thanksgiving were already well established by the time of Federal Era in America, a time that corresponds to the Regency Era in England.

In 1834, the New Hampshire Patriot made note of the approaching holiday: A moderate rise in the price of molasses and spices—the increased demand for laces, ribbons, and dancing pumps—the hurrying of tailors, milliners, and mantua makers—frequent and important consultation of young gentlemen—whispering, flushed faces, and anxious looks among young ladies—and lastly, a string of proclamations announcing the 27th of November as a day of Thanksgiving in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont.”** Farmers harvested their pumpkins, gathered their eggs, fatted their pigs, and selected the best turkeys and chickens for slaughter, all in preparation for the biggest holiday of the year.

I recently completed a story at A Happy Assembly, Mr. Darcy in Old New York, where Mr. Darcy, Georgiana, and Mr. Bingley travel to Tarrytown in the Hudson River Valley to visit Charles Bingley’s Uncle Richard, who has been living in America for twenty-five years. Of course, Darcy falls in love with American, Elizabeth Bennet, but a lot of the history of the region, including the Thanksgiving traditions, is included. Here are three excerpts:

Mining P&P Nuggets

Although I love to write Jane Austen fan fiction and novels with Austen tie-ins, I do not profess to be an Austen scholar. But because so many people out there DO know a lot about Austen and her works, I am learning something all the time. At present, I am reading the annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice, edited by Patricia Meyer Spacks. In her notes, Ms. Spacks states that when Mr. Darcy tells Bingley that "I am in no humour at present to give consequece to young ladies who are slighted by other men," there is more there than I thought. When Darcy declares that he will not give consequence to Elizabeth, what he is actually saying is that because of his rank in society, by dancing with Elizabeth, he would have elevated her status. So not only did Darcy insult Elizabeth by saying she is merely tolerable, he knowingly refused to confer status on her. No wonder she disliked him!

The second nugget I mined was when Mrs. Bennet was recapping the night of the assembly for her husband. "Only think of that my dear; [Mr. Bingley] actually danced with [Jane] twice, and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second time." Again, according to Ms. Spacks, when "a man asked a lady to dance, he would be expected to remain her partner for two dances. If he invited her a second time, they would share two more dances," i.e., four dances. That's a nice chunk of time to spend with one partner. So Jane truly was honored by Mr. Bingley's attentions.

Stay tuned for more nuggets or share your own. Mary

Little G, the Daughter of the Duchess of Devonshire

Castle Howard, Yorkshire

 

The snuff box sold at the Duke of Devonshire’s attic sale showed a picture of the most famous Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, and her eldest child, Georgiana Dorothy Cavendish. (See picture in post below.) The Duchess, who was married to the 5th Duke of Devonshire, was bound to him in a loveless marriage, one in which he showed no affection for her, probably because he was showering his love on the Duchess’s dearest friend, Lady Elizabeth Forster, his mistress of 25 years, and co-resident of Chatsworth. Lady Elizabeth became the Duke’s second Duchess upon the death of Georgiana in 1806.



Duchess and Little G by Reynolds

 But what happened to Georgiana's little girl? Little G married the 6th Earl of Carlisle and took up residence at their beautiful home in Yorkshire, Castle Howard, the setting for the television series, Brideshead Revisited. The earl served in the moderate Tory government of George Canning. However, Carlisle split with the Tories over electoral reform and later served as a member of the cabinet in the Whig administration of Lord Grey. Ironically, Lord Grey had had an affair with Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, and together they had had a child, Eliza Courtney Ellice. Lord Grey was married to Mary Ponsonby, a descendant of the 3^rd Duke of Devonshire. Are we clear on this?

The Duke of Devonshire Cleans Out His Attic




Snuff Box with
Georgiana and Little G



When Peregrine Cavendish, the present Duke of Devonshire, inherited Chatsworth, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Devonshire, five years ago, he discovered that the attic of the manor house was stuffed to the gills with centuries of accumulated bric-a-brac. Crates of china, glass and silver, lanterns, lacquered screens, paintings, rocking horses, train sets, globes, a pram, stuffed animals and birds were among the attic’s treasures. According to His Lordship, “It was scarcely possible to open doors, let alone to store anything else.” His response was to contact Harry Dalmeny, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s, and to conduct “the greatest attic sale ever held.”

Duke of Devonshire



Sotheby’s estimated that the three-day sale in early October of 20,000 items would raise £2.5m. The final total was closer to £6.5m. The 400 people in attendance competed with 1,000 more registered remote bidders. The highest price was £565,250, almost twice the top estimate, paid for a 1735 white marble fireplace designed by William Kent for Devonshire House, the family’s enormous London home that was demolished in the 1920s to make way for the Green Park tube station. The fireplace had been dismantled into 30 pieces and stored in a building once used to repair tractors.

The Story of Old English - The Building Blocks of a Language

I love English. It has a richness and depth that is unmatched by any other language. German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000. Compare that to the 650,000 to 750,000 entries in an unabridged English dictionary. According to The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg, “Our everyday conversation is still founded on and funded by Old English… We can have intelligent conversations in Old English and only rarely do we need to swerve away from it. Almost all of the hundred most common words in our language, wherever it is spoken, come from Old English. There are three from Old Norse: “they,” “their” and “them,” and the first French derived word is “number” at seventy-six.” Here are the 100 most commonly used words:

The Federal Era – America in the Georgian Era

Although Jane Austen is forever associated with Regency England, she actually lived most of her life in the Georgian Era. In America, this time period is known by the much more democratic name of the Federal Period. During this time, a young nation looked to ancient civilizations for inspiration, and thus was born the Greek Revival in the United States.

An example of America’s enthusiasm for Greece, Rome, and Egypt can be seen in the names given to the cities established during this period: Troy, Attica, and Ithaca, New York, Alexandria, Virginia, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Athens and Rome, Georgia, among others. Its greatest and continuing impact can be seen in architecture. Country manor houses (see Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia above) were designed with Ionic and Doric columns and/or cupolas, such as the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, New York Public Library and just about every 19th Century and early 20th Century state house.

America’s enthusiasm for all things Classical is the only possible explanation for Greenough’s sculpture of George Washington in toga-like draping. Commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 1832 in honor of Washington’s 100th birthday, it was modeled on the statue of Zeus in the temple on Mount Olympus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. But a half naked sculpture of a man who had led America in its darkest hours during the Revolution and who was its first president had a real ick factor to most who viewed it in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Many Americans found the sight of a bare-chested Washington off-putting and even comical. According to the Smithsonian Press, “After the statue was relocated to the east lawn of the Capitol in 1843, some joked that Washington was desperately reaching for his clothes. In 1908, Greenough's statue finally came in from the cold, and Congress transferred it to the Smithsonian. It remained at the [Smithsonian] Castle until 1964, when it was moved to the new Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History). The marble Washington has held court on the second floor ever since.” The Father of His Country as a frat boy is a must see for anyone visiting the District of Columbia.

A Matter of Some Delicacy

Every woman knows that when she goes just about any place where there is a crowd that she will end up standing on line for the restroom, but at least there will be a restroom. In the Regency Era, few houses had indoor toilets, and they relied on the chamber pot or the outdoor necessary. In the backstory for the 2003 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, it was noted that there were no indoor facilities, male or female, for the guests. As a result, a woman had to give a lot of thought to what she drank before and during an assembly or ball, such as the one that Charles Bingley hosted at Netherfield Hall, very much like we do before getting on an airplane. I assume that most women judiciously sipped their punch throughout the evening. Of course, for the men, a nice bush would suffice. Pictured to the right is a very pretty chamber pot from the Regency Era.