bunnyjadwiga

Ok, this is only over a month old, but...
On October 5, I went to a lecture here at Drew called:

"Arrows, Eyes, and Royal Hermits: How Historiography Couldn't Kill Harold Godwinson, the Last Anglo-Saxon King"
by Dr. Martin Kennedy Foys, Hood College.

Foys' disseration project (in English?) was a Digitalization of the
Bayeaux Tapestry. Fascinating stuff. The Digitization is nice and clear, though I'm not sure I trust the color values, and it has the advantage that you can scroll it continuously. For those interested in the Tapestry I think it would be a good buy.

And as Foys worked with the tapestry images, he looked at the figure that is supposed to be Harold getting an arrow in the eye. (immediately followed by Harold getting offed by an armed horseman). He noticed that none of the other sections had Harold more than once, and that even though the name is near the standing arrow-victim, the central figure in that section really seems to be Harold and his horse-riding attacker. Looking at the accounts of Harold's death, he found early accounts had nothing to say about an arrow; but accounts from people who *might* have seen the Tapestry began to incorporate the arrow story later. As a result, he suspects that the depiction of the arrow-victim in the Tapestry may have influenced later historiography. Interesting. (I pointed out, looking at the piece, that to my inexperienced eye, the arrow victim and Harold-getting-killed had different colors/patterns of leg wraps, and that all the figures in that particular section have the same armor, mail, etc. so perhaps the similarities might have something to with the artisan working on that section.)

Foys also discussed the legend that Harold escaped, and lived out his life in a monastery somewhere... I don't remember most of what he said here, but by 1100 there's one monastery claiming he died there, and a later foundation at the SAME monastery (less than 25 years later) claiming he didn't survive, and certainly not at that monastery...

Recently I plowed through Not in Front of The Servants: Domestic Service in England 1859-1939, by Frank Dawes. It was fascinating reading. The author, the son of a former indoor servant, collected reminiscences from former servants via a newspaper advertisement, and combined that with archival materials and printed instructional and statistical sources from the period. Some editions were subtitled "A true portrait of upstair/downstairs life." It's a fascinating portrait of the kind of work indoor domestic servants were expected to do, and their average working conditions.

It's pretty clear that indoor servants had very long working hours, and that their employers expected them to be ready to jump to service at a minute's notice. Housemaids, tweenies, and scullery maids as young as 10 or 12 worked steadily all day at a variety of physically demanding tasks. Working conditions could be, and often were, uncomfortable and degrading.

However, I couldn't help comparing the information given in Dawes' work about the work of domestic servants, with that given in other sources about women's work in their own homes in the time period described. It's certainly true that many of the upper-class women who employed multiple servants were women of leisure, and did not do any of their own housework. However, other sources suggest that the division of laboring to non-laboring women was not concise and clear as Dawes paints it, and that no matter what the public facade might be, a significant number of women both employed domestic help and did housework themselves. It's possible that this division was far more cloudy in America than it was in Britain.

But Dawes is not very familiar with the history of domestic service in the 16th & 17th century; some of the customs he suggests are unaccountable would be illuminated by a look at earlier custom- and ettiquette sources. My impression is that he also doesn't seem to grasp the scale of domestic work in even working-class households of the period. It never occurs to him that the tracts encouraging the domestic servant to be happy with her lot because she would work just as hard in her own home if she had one might have some truth in them. (As a male writing in 1974, Dawes would be unlikely to be familiar with the unending nature of housework.) As difficult and disadvantaged as employment 'in service' might be, there were some advantages (division of labor, for instance, so that one would not have to be chasing children and blacking the same time) and having a roof over one's head and, in a good situation, food on the table. Dawes quotes Florence Faux, "Most people thought service, where food and lodging were assured, a better proposition than working in a shop or factory under sweated conditions," despite the danger of being turned off without a reference.

Some of the letters that Dawes reproduced are on the web here:
http://www.swallowcliffehall.com/letters.html

Kristin Karen Larsdatter posted a link to a review of Safia Coppolla's movie Marie Antoinette.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/24/AR2006052402821.html
And I read the review and thought, hey, that might be cool, even though I have very little patience with that time period.

Why? Well, another dirty little secret: I find I prefer movies that attempt to capture the feeling, not the details, of certain historical stuff. I HATED Elizabeth, though the costuming was good-- but I'm not a costumer; I couldn't imagine Elizabeth being that stupid. Headstrong-- yes. Worried, yes. Even uncertain, in private. But in public, Elizabeth was only uncertain as an act... Our Miss B. would be more Elizabeth than the young queen Elizabeth in that movie.

But on the other hand, when I see something that riffs on the idea, like The Knight's Tale I'm free to see if it captures the moment. (By the way, there apparently was at least one female armorer mentioned in period literature; I'd have to check my copy of Gies' Women of the Middle Ages to get the details, but the documentation is there.) I really liked that movie. In fact, it's the only thing that's ever managed to convey to me the romance of a) jousting and b) being fought for in a tourney. [Not that I don't like watching the fighting in the SCA sometimes. I just don't see it as all that romantic, no matter what knight's wives tell me. Character defect in me, I guess.] But when I watched The Knight's Tale I saw the ideas that I had concieved of a tourney knight when reading Georges Duby's book on William The Marshall and Barber & Barker's books come to life. The costumes sucked, of course. But I'm no costumer.

At which point my brain wanders off into the idea of a movie based on Eleanor of Acquitaine in modern guise.

Contrariwise, the tendency to romantic versions of the story of national heroes/heroines makes me think of a romantic epic based on Jadwiga and Jagiello. (They would have to have the bath scene in there, and of course the business with her taking an axe to the door...)

Silly of course, but fun...

Our Library's JSTOR subscription includes the journal, Garden History.

"Mediaeval Plantsmanship in England: The Culture of Rosemary." John H. Harvey. Garden History, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Sep., 1972), pp. 14-21.

"Our Heritage: The Dutch Garden, an Introduction to Its History." C. M. Cremers. Garden History, Vol. 2, No. 1. (Autumn, 1973), pp. 10-29.

"Spanish Gardens in Their Historical Background," John H. Harvey. Garden History, Vol. 3, No. 1. (Autumn, 1974), pp. 7-14.

"Gardens in Elizabethan Embroidery," Thomasina Beck. Garden History, Vol. 3, No. 1. (Autumn, 1974), pp. 44-56"

"Medicines and Spices, with Special Reference to Medieval Monastic Accounts," Marjorie Jenkins. Garden History, Vol. 4, No. 3. (Autumn, 1976), pp. 47-49.

"Gilliflower and Carnation," John H. Harvey. Garden History, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Spring, 1978), pp. 46-57.

" The Supply of Plants in the North-West," John H. Harvey. Garden History, Vol. 6, No. 3. (Winter, 1978), pp. 33-37.

"Walls in Half-Circles and Serpentine Walls," Jean O'Neill. Garden History, Vol. 8, No. 3. (Winter, 1980), pp. 69-76.

(ganked from marymont)

Tell me some piece of pre-1600 C.E. trivia that you don't think anyone else reading this will know.

P.S. Please feel free to re-post this in your own journals. I'm curious to see what other trivia people come up with.

Tattycat asked me about this book, but of course I can't find the actual book (I need to get to my boxes of books stored in the attic).
Olga Sronkova, Fashions through the centuries: Renaissance, baroque, and rococo.. (London, Spring Books 1959) (Originally published in German by Artia Press; I believe it is the same title as La mode du XVème au XVIIIème siècle.)

Sronkova is the same woman who wrote Gothic Women's Fashion, the book that pointed out the similarities between the dress of "Bohemian Bathhouse Girls" and the undergarment possibly shown in some pictures of the period.

In the Fashions through the centuries book, though, she is really concentrating on Bohemian fashion, which seems to have been heavily dependent on the Spanish Renaissance styles during that time period. This is only obvious when you start looking at the sources/provenances of the illustrations.

Johanna Holloway, one of the other skilled librarians of the SCA, posted this picture link to SCA-cooks.
http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=45891+0+none
I would like to make a display something like this for an event. I don't know that I will be able to do it for 12th night.
What would I put in it? Stuff I already know how to make include:
- Hais
- Gingerbrede
- comfits
- Figs in wine (de Nola)

Stuff to work on includes:
- Marzipan
- Preserved berries
- Fritters (I've made them but not very often)

Quoting from The Tradescants: Their plants, gardens and museum, 1570-1662 by Mea Allan:
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I think one of my LJ friends will be interested in this:
3000 Images of Danish Church Murals from the Medieval Period:
http://www.kalkmalerier.dk/

Stearns, Peter N., ed. Encyclopedia of European social history from 1350 to 2000. (New York : Scribner, 2001) 6 vol.
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