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Date: 07 April 2003 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 5 Apr 2003 to 6 Apr 2003 (#2003-95)
There are 12 messages totalling 317 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. hirsute Victorians (5)
2. Fictional works on the white slave trade (2)
3. Hirsute Victorians
4. Re hirsute Victorians
5. fascinating thanks
6. Mr Nightingale's Diary
7. VICTORIAN (AND OTHER) TRAVEL BOOKS: SALE AT SOTHEBY'S LONDON
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 01:10:26 -0500
From: June or Hilton Siegel <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: hirsute Victorians
> Martin Danahay wrote:
> "does anybody have any information on the Victorian attitude towards
> beards? ... [I] have vague recollection of beards being considered
> unsavoury"
Trollope's prominent beard may have inspired the article on beards in Mullen
and Munson's 'Penguin Companion to Trollope'.
June W. Siegel
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 10:18:56 +0100
From: Michel Faber <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: hirsute Victorians
Martin A Danahay wrote:
> Forgive me if this question has been posed before, but does
> anybody have any information on the Victorian attitude towards
> beards? (I should also confess that I have one myself and have
> vague recollection of beards being considered.... unsavoury...
> ahem...during this period).
This question has indeed been posed before, most recently a couple
of years ago by Sheldon Goldfarb.
In response, I mentioned John Dalbiac Luard's painting 'The
Welcome Arrival', reproduced in Christopher Wood's 'Victorian
Panorama' among other art books. Wood's footnote describes the
picture thus: "Three soldiers at Balaclava in 1854 unpacking a gift
box from England [...] Two of the men sport beards and pipes, both
of which later became fashionable in England as a result of the
Crimean campaign".
Another listmember called Grace Hurd wrote:
> On the subject of Victorian Beardedness, you may want
> to check the Victorian list archives. Back in '96 or so I started a
> line of discussion on the subject of Victorian beards and received
> many useful and lively responses, including discussion about the
> London beard craze and the emergence of the beard during the
> Crimean War.
>
> Of particular interest was a posting by Charles Robinson & his
> citing of a reference to correspondence between Leigh Hunt &
> Charles Ollier re the "beard as a natural respirator" during
> the Winter of 1853-54 and its beneficial, therapeutic aspects.
>
> There were even song/poem lyrics posted extolling the virtues of
> the beard!
>
> Yours, in appreciation of the noble beard,
> Grace Weigel Hurd
Sadly for the nobly endowed Martin Danahay, I can find no
evidence more recent than late 2001 of Grace's presence on
Victoria. The archives would seem to be the only place to meet.
Best wishes,
Michel Faber
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 12:18:57 +0100
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Fictional works on the white slave trade
In the rather surprising context of one of the late Charlotte Yonge novels
(if memory serves it is _Beechcroft at Rockstone_) one of the plot elements
involves the saving of a virtuous young girl with the circus (?fair) who is
menaced with being exported to Belgium - I think this would have been
understood, at the post-'Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon' date, as alluding
to white slavery.
One of the sisters in Olive Schreiner's _From Man to Man_ becomes a
prostitute, as I recall, but I am not sure if white slavery per se was
involved.
Lesley Hall
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website http://www.lesleyahall.net
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 11:01:50 -0300
From: Beth Sutton-Ramspeck <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Hirsute Victorians
Martin,
Since you work in the latter part of the century, you may be thinking of
late-century anxieties about beards that arose with the discovery of
bacteria. Especially in the 1880s through 1910, people worried a great
deal about "fomite infection," the idea that objects including clothing,
furniture, and, yes, beards, could harbor dried microbes, which could at
some late date spring back to life and infect people to whom they were
spread. One reason for this fear, bizarrely enough, is that the first
bacterium to be discovered was anthrax, and people generalized from the
behavior of anthrax spores, assuming all bacteria had a similar capacity
to lurk in dirt and dust for long periods.
Thus, one explanation for the disappearance of beads and trailing skirts
in the later years of the century was fear of fomites.
There's a wonderful discussion of the effects on daily life of the
discovery of germs in Nancy Tomes's _The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women,
and the Microbe in American Life_ (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998), which
has several entries on beards. As the title indicates, Tomes's focus is
American, and from what I've seen, many of the American responses to
germs Tomes describes took a while longer to get to England, but I know
I've seen British comments in the 1890s about irresponsible women
bringing dangerous contagions into their homes on the hems of their
skirts, and certainly comments about germs lurking in upholstery and
heavy curtains, so I'd be willing to bet that the British were hearing
about the alleged danger of beards as well.
Beth Sutton-Ramspeck
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 10:24:32 -0400
From: Heather Schell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: hirsute Victorians
There's an interesting discussion of beards and race in ch. 3 of
Londa Schiebinger's _Nature's Body_. She focuses on the importance
attributed to facial hair by European racial theorists comparing
themselves to American Indians, who had little facial hair.
--
Heather Schell
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 11:09:46 EDT
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re hirsute Victorians
Not that unsavoury perhaps, Martin.
I have a note of an intriguing sounding 1847 pamphlet by the Rev William
Henslowe entitled "Beard shaving and the common use of the razor an
unnatural, irrational, unmanly, ungodly and fatal fashion among Christians".
Rosemary Oakeshott (research student)
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 16:28:28 +0100
From: Liz Miller <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Fictional works on the white slave trade
This may be too far off the mark, but you might look at Shelley Stamp's work
on early-twentieth-century American silent films about the white slave
trade. Chapter 2 of her book _Movie-Struck Girls_ is called, "Is Any Girl
Safe? Motion Pictures, Women's Leisure, and the White Slavery Scare." Films
about white slavery, apparently, were wildly popular among female audiences
in the 1910s.
Best wishes,
Liz Miller
Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
University of Wisconsin - Madison
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 17:39:59 +0100
From: Emelyne Godfrey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: hirsute Victorians
Dear Martin,
There's a great piece in the 1856 edition of Punch on the virtues and vices
of the beard. It's a humourous take on the beard, and it does reveal some
interesting attitudes.
Emelyne Godfrey
Birkbeck, London
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Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 18:15:39 +0100
From: Susan Hoyle <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: fascinating thanks
Many and belated thanks to Suzanne Daly, Lesley Hall and Joellen Masters for
pointers to Victorian mentions of fascinators. My knitting group was
intrigued.
Susan Hoyle, historian and knitter
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 14:00:26 EDT
From: Tamar Heller <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: hirsute Victorians
In The Moonstone (set in the late 1840s), Gabriel Betteredge finds Franklin
Blake's beard and moustache distressing, a sign of overmuch foreign varnish
and, one suspects, rather effeminate. John Sutherland's note in the most
recent Oxford World's Classics edition, which also draws on Anthea Trodd's
notes to the earlier edtion, claims that in the late 1840s beards still had
Bohemian associations, but became more popular (and "manly") after the
Crimean War. (See pp. 475-76 of the Sutherland edition.)
Tamar Heller
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 19:21:13 +0100
From: Paul Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Mr Nightingale's Diary
Does anyone know what part Dickens played in the farce written by him
and Lemon called Mr Nightingale's Diary when it was first performed with
Bulwer Lytton's play Not So Bad As We Seem in 1851?
I have searched but cannot find it.
Many thanks
best wishes
Paul
Paul Lewis
Mobile 07836 217 311
Web www.paullewis.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 00:26:01 +0100
From: K Eldron <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIAN (AND OTHER) TRAVEL BOOKS: SALE AT SOTHEBY'S LONDON
List members with an interest in 19c travel may like to know of the =
following sale taking place on May 28 and 29:
"The Library of Humphrey Winterton: East Africa, The Sudan, Egypt, =
Arabia and the Islands of the Indian Ocean=20
The Winterton collection comprises many thousands of books and =
manuscripts covering East Africa, the Sudan, Egypt, Arabia and islands =
of the Indian Ocean. The sheer number of topics covered reflects the =
scale of the collection, which includes numerous sought-after titles on =
big-game hunting, natural history, linguistics, slavery and its =
suppression, trade, travel and exploration. The fascinating search for =
the source of the Nile is well-documented and the epic accounts of =
Livingstone, Burton, Stanley, Baker and the great German explorers are =
also represented. The library includes volumes dating from the 16th =
century through to the present day reflecting many years of European and =
Arab influence in the regions and is expected to fetch in excess of =A31 =
million"
According to the Sunday Times, works by women adventurers are well =
represented.
The lots are on exhibition in the days running up to the sale - times =
can be found on the Sotheby's website. =20
K Eldron
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 5 Apr 2003 to 6 Apr 2003 (#2003-95)
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