The Civil War was a memory. In the first five years after the war’s end many of carpetbaggers and scalawags had been found out by resentful losers reposed in the Southern States and so some of those northern infiltrators and Southern turncoats, high on quick riches and low on moral self worth redirected their attention… Continue reading Sanderson at the Langham Hotel
Month: March 2017
Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Rome, that is to say ancient Rome “fell”. Every schoolkid knows that. But a thought occurs to me. Was it the hordes of heathens knocking at the gate that told Romans, in a manner not unlike Nicholson in The Shining that “Here’s Gothy…!” as they chopped their way through that gate? Or were there subtler tides that… Continue reading Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Somebody call the hair police
What did you do if you’re a young (ish) woman in the French region of Brittany in the 1860s and you needed a new dress or a pair of shoes? Why, you had a haircut, that’s what you did. Here’s Bentley’s Miscellany on the subject in 1863:- From 15 to 40 years of age the… Continue reading Somebody call the hair police
Three paragraphs
Not as bad as the 1868 earthquake and tsunamis where 25,000 died, but still pretty serious. This is an example of how the God-fearing 19th century took on board a natural disaster without the handwringing cliché-ridden sentimentalism with which 24 hour news has sensitised the world. This June 30 1877 report is from a provincial paper in the… Continue reading Three paragraphs
Tommy this and Tommy that
Here’s a tale about one of the soldiers of the Queen, one Edwin Kempson Mole (1847-1937). For a few months in 1897 this soldier became famous in a Kiplingesque Tommy Atkins sort of way, after his reminiscences of army service were published. But it is worth looking at what parts of the story the book did not… Continue reading Tommy this and Tommy that