---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 4 Feb 2005 to 5 Feb 2005 (#2005-37)
From: "Automatic digest processor" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, February 6, 2005 5:03 am
To: "Recipients of VICTORIA digests" <[log in to unmask]>
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There are 10 messages totalling 340 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Mud and Muck clings on
2. Stereoview story sequences
3. Victorian Photography (2)
4. Kept men in Victorian literature (3)
5. Trollope and Cross-examination
6. photographs, how a horse runs (2)
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Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 10:51:47 +0000
From: Sunie Fletcher <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Mud and Muck clings on
Apologies for a late contribution, but I've been
catching up with this discussion -
John Sutherland has a piece titled 'What is Jo
sweeping?' in his collection *Is Heathcliff a
Murderer?* It cites conflicting arguments about how
much street 'mud' was in fact merde, and does the same
on the question of OMF's dust-heaps - 'dust' being,
like 'ashes', a euphemism for human ordure.
Sunie Fletcher
University of Exeter
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Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 01:54:29 -0500
From: "Dr. Russell A. Potter" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Stereoview story sequences
In regard to Michael Hargreave Mawson's stereoview: The image is an
intriguing one -- the fact that it's a paste-down image suggests to
me that it may in fact be earlier than 1860, although the fact that
the paste-down is a single print may hedge the date a bit. The
decorative card also served the purpose of assisting the amateur in
framing the image.
As for the uniforms, I'd bear in mind the following possibilities:
1) A photographer's studio often had costumes, including possibly
uniforms purchased as surplus items.
2) Outdated uniforms might still be owned or worn by veterans of the
period during which they were still current.
3) If indeed these were posed, set pieces from a sequence designed to
evoke a somewhat earlier period, surplus or outdated uniforms might
have been rented from a variety of sources, including the military
itself.
It's also worth noting the odd, early phenomenon of "simulations"
which are very close to the "real" -- even right down the road from
the actual events (a war, say) photographer's studios might have
"prop" uniforms available to make a view or CDV to send back to
impress the family. The most remarkable instance of this, to my
mind, is the photo which appears in the graphic novel "Maus," seeming
to show Vladek Spiegelman in his prison-camp uniform -- but in fact,
the clean, neatly pressed look of the cloth confirms that it is, as
the caption indicates, a "prop" uniform from a photographer's studio.
As a side-light, I'd note that when, a year or two back, my sons were
members of a Civil-War re-enactment regiment, many of its members had
had sepia-toned cards or CDV's made of themselves in replica
uniforms. Some of the folks who make the cards actually used the
original chemical methods such as the Ambrotype/Bromide process, so
some day, if they sit in a trunk long enough, these ersatz originals
may be hard to distinguish from actual 1860's prints.
Russell Potter
Rhode Island College
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 07:37:00 +0000
From: Albert Purbrick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Victorian Photography
Check the BBC web site in the US - I'm pretty sure compatible disks are
available. I know
videos are. A wonderful website in itself.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 17:28:41 -0000
From: Keith Ramsey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Victorian Photography
Many DVD players are able to play discs from other regions, but the
manufacturers aren't keen to publicise this. The problem is finding out
exactly how to set up the player to do this.
Keith Ramsey
Bristol Business School
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 17:28:41 -0000
From: Keith Ramsey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Kept men in Victorian literature
Angela Richardson wrote "What about Phineas Finn in the Trollope novels?"
The possibility that Finn was based on Chichester Fortescue has been
discussed here before, and Fortescue, as a relatively impecunious MP, was,
to some extent at least, financially dependent on his wife, Frances,
Countess Waldegrave; the same was probably true of her previous husband,
George Granville Harcourt, who was also an MP.
Keith Ramsey
Bristol Business School
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Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 11:42:23 -0600
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Trollope and Cross-examination
Hello to everyone,
I am hopeful that listmembers with some familiarity with
nineteenth-century legal procedure can help me with a passage
from _Orley Farm_. As the defense lawyers plot their strategy
in anticipation of their client's impending trial, it becomes
apparent to them that the prosecution's case stands or falls on
the testimony of two particular witnesses. The cross-
examination skills of Mr. Chaffanbrass, the Old Bailey
barrister, make him the obvious choice to attack both, but
Trollope notes: "Professional etiquette required that the cross-
examination of these two most important witnesses should not be
left in the hands of the same barrister" (chapter 62; "What the
four Lawyers thought about it").
Did such a rule of "etiquette" actually exist, or did Trollope
invent it? If it was real, how was such restraint justified to
the (money-paying) client?
I have not been able to verify the existence or non-existence
of the rule; in fact, I can find no discussion on it at all.
Doug Moore
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 13:19:32 EST
From: Robert Lapides <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: photographs, how a horse runs
The information sent by K Matthes -- about how useful
it is to know how a horse runs -- was fascinating. But
I want to add that Muybridge's most important contribution
was, of course, in showing what the camera might do.
There was also a downside, now fairly well-understood.
Many late Victorians used the early successes of
photography to make the case that realism was a
matter of exactly depicted moments and details, as
opposed to the more imaginative rendering of larger
truths that Dickens, for example, was so brilliant at.
In fact, this was one big reason most late 19C critics
didn't take Dickens seriously. Or else, they chose
to use his supposed lack of realism as a way of
dismissing the challenge his more radical vision
presented.
Something similar happened last year with Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit 911. Its critics pointed to its
various lapses, its freedom with some of the facts.
Its supporters, in contrast, were amazed that some-
one had finally told the truth, and they didn't mind
that some of the facts were distorted. As with the
response to Dickens, the social class a critic
identified him/herself with had a lot to do with
his/her judgment of the film.
Bob Lapides
bmcc, cuny
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 15:49:36 EST
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: photographs, how a horse runs
In a message dated 2/4/2005 9:02:22 PM Pacific Standard Time, "K. M. Matthes"
<[log in to unmask]> writes:
> Here is an interesting article about Eadweard Muybridge, who photographed a
> horse running at a race track in 1878. This changed the way painters
painted
> horses because they realized they had been painting them incorrectly.
>
> http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues04/sep04/indelible.html
I would like to point out that Jemima Blackburn, a very observant animal
painter, anticipated Muybridge's accomplishment in some respects. "He [James
Clerk-Maxwell] ... and I used to construct mechanical toys together,
jumping jacks
and wheels of life. I made the drawings of animals in motion for them, and
was
pleased to discover when the instantaneous photography came in that I got all
the motions correct, except once only. I made a mistake in the legs of a
galloping horse; it gallops differently from a dog in an accelerated
canter, not
in a succession of leaps." _Jemima: the paintings and memoirs of a Victorian
lady_, ed. Rob Fairley, p. 109. The phenakistoscope wheel reproduced
alongside
this passage gets the motions correct, and is presumably a horse trotting or
cantering -- I do not know enough to tell which. Certainly the majority of
her
horses appear to be correctly drawn, not in rocking-horse style.
Helen Schinske
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 08:18:37 +1100
From: Ellen Jordan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Kept men in Victorian literature
If men like Phineas Finn who lived predominantly on their wives' money
are to be included (though I feel this is stretching the definition of
"kept") there is Colonel Brownlow in Charlotte Yonge's Magnum Bonum. He
marries a woman with a moderate property, retires from the army, devotes
his time to managing the property, and produces a large family.
This was pretty much the situation of Yonge' own family. Yonge's
grandmother would not allow Yonge's father to marry her daughter unless
(at the age of 27) he resigned his commission in the army. He spent the
rest of his life managing this mother-in-law's (and when she died his
wife's) property. I don't think, however, that either he, or his
neighbours, regarded him as "kept".
I imagine an unmarried man "kept" by a richer woman would have held
some nominal appointment in her household, secretary, estate manager,
major domo, courier. I seem to remember that this was the case with
Frances Hodgson Burnett and the aspiring actor Stephen Townesend. When
she first took him under her wing she put him on salary as her business
manager, while trying to push his acting career. Of course further down
the social scale such men could be conveniently described as "lodgers",
like Vandeleur Lee in the Shaw household.
Ellen Jordan
University of Newcastle
Australia
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 12:35:20 +0800
From: Tamara Wagner <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Kept men in Victorian literature
--- Ellen Jordan <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I imagine an unmarried man "kept" by a richer woman
> would have held
> some nominal appointment in her household,
> secretary, estate manager,
> major domo, courier.
Aurora Floyd's first husband in Braddon's novel is
kept as a trainer on her estate (or rather on the
estate belonging to a man she married thinking her
husband was dead), but again, she bribes him to stay
away rather than to live secretly with her. His
earlier position on her father's estate - chosen by
the indulgent father as her groom because of his good
looks (!) - nonetheless partly anticipates Lady
Chatterley's Lover... at least as far as the
class-crossing passion/scandal goes.
In a different vein, Phineas Finn has repeatedly been
mentioned, and that his way of accepting financial
(and political) help seems to be approved of in the
novels. I would like to add the immaculately
honourable Plantagenet Palliser as a similarly
ambiguous example: it is repeatedly emphasised that
Lady Glencora's money comes in very useful indeed in
furthering his career, which at once contrasts
pointedly with and to an extent makes problematic
George Vavasor's ruthless speculations on his cousin's
money and also "poor Burgo's" (as he is repeatedly
called) desire of Glencora's money. Ultimately,
Glencora asks Plantagent to "keep" Burgo, i.e. to give
him an allowance, but of course to keep him away as
well as out of trouble.
=====
Tamara S. Wagner
Assistant Professor, English Literature
Website: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/tswagner/tamarawagner.htm
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 4 Feb 2005 to 5 Feb 2005 (#2005-37)
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