Tag: The Georgian House

Madeira Mondays: Exploring The Royal Mile, Edinburgh (Historical Site Visit)

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If you’ve been to Edinburgh, then it’s very likely you’ve been to the Royal Mile. It’s right smack dab in the heart of the city and it’s where most tourists flock to, evidenced by the abundance of souvenir shops called things like ‘Thistle do nicely’. If I’m quite honest, it’s an area that many locals (myself included) tend to avoid, especially during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when it’s full to the brim with actors in face paint or wigs or funny costumes asking you to please please please come see their show (I’ve been one of those actors too, by the way). All this to say: I don’t hang out on the Royal Mile too often.

But when my friend Alan, who I know from the Georgian House, offered to take me on a private historical tour through the ‘hidden’ aspects of the Royal Mile, I jumped at the chance. Turns out, there was a lot I didn’t know about this famous street.

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Madeira Mondays: A Visit to a Georgian Dining Room

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Longtime readers will know that I often spend my weekends volunteering as a costumed historical guide at The Georgian House here in Edinburgh. It’s a beautifully restored 18th century townhouse, where you can visit and see what life was like for the family who owned the house, and their servants who kept it running, in the late 18th/early 19th century.

I’ve written posts inspired by several spots in the home already: including the bedroom, the parlor and the drawing room. BUT I don’t think I’ve done a post yet about the dining room, which is often a favorite of visitors when they come to tour the house. I was in there last weekend telling people all about dining and food in Georgian Edinburgh so I thought this would be the perfect time to spotlight the dining room on the blog.

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Madeira Mondays: Return to The Highland Folk Museum

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Long-time readers of the blog might remember a post from last summer when I visited The Highland Folk Museum, a wonderful little open air museum nestled in the Cairngorms National Park. Me and my traveling companions were so enthralled with the museum after that first visit that we determined we needed to return, as soon as travel was permitted again in Scotland. So, this June, that’s actually what we did!

If you’ve not had a chance to read that first post about The Highland Folk Museum, I’d recommend it. The property is massive (80 acres) and covered in buildings recreating different eras of Scottish history, from the 1700s through the 1960’s. There is so much to take in. I decided to cover different aspects in each of my posts. That first post covers the recreated 18th century village in the museum, where bits of Outlander was filmed, and where we spent most of our time during our last visit. Whereas this post will be more focused on the rest of the park, which we explored this time around.

This place is so unique and honestly doesn’t feel touristy at all. It truly does give you a slice of Highland life, and how ordinary people used to live. We marveled at not only how detailed all the recreated buildings were (so many little items from frying pans to kettles to quilts!) but also how well kept they were. We didn’t see any dust. Some of the surfaces were even cleaner than my own desk at home! It’s clearly a museum created and maintained with attention, affection and care.

Here are a few of the highlights from our trip this time around…

My favorite thing we saw this time was not actually a building. We were lucky enough to arrive at exactly the moment that they were shearing the sheep! I’ve never seen sheep sheared before and wow – what a process!

Those sheep were thrashing about and it really looked like hard work.

I was surprised that the wool came off in big swathes, almost like blankets, not little tufts.

We got to see the sheep hosed down afterwards with a pink spray, which it turns out was to ward off the flies (who could lay eggs in any cuts the sheep might have gotten, which could then get infected).

In addition to the sheep, we also met some Highland cows.

We saw so many great buildings too – a recreated post office, railway waiting room, sweet shop, and several homes (most of these were depicting periods from the late 1800s through to the 1950s).

Inside the recreated early 1900s post office

There was also a shinty field and we learned about the history of shinty (an ancient and historically very brutal Scottish sport which is still played now – in a more tame manner! Apparently Scottish emigrants also brought it to Canada, leading to modern ice hockey).

My favorite building that we saw on this trip was a 1930s school house. This was probably my favorite because the guide that we encountered there was so knowledgable about schooling during this period. We heard all about the (usually orphaned) ‘overspill’ children from Glasgow who were shipped away to the Highlands for a ‘better life’ and education in school houses like this. And we heard about the brutal corporal punishments used on students for all manner of offenses, and also about how students were beaten for speaking Gaelic (you had to speak English in schools).

(I appreciated how the guide didn’t sugarcoat any of this, and the Highlands does have a rather sad history: from the Highland Clearances, to forced emigration to the U.S or Canada due to lack of work and opportunities.)

All in all I’m so happy that we travelled back to the Highland Folk Museum and were able to explore it in its entirety. The fact that it’s an open-air museum which allows you to be in the breathtaking landscape as you explore all the buildings is a major bonus. And, in a place where the landscape is so linked to the people, the buildings and the culture, being outdoors is another way to learn about Scotland’s past and present. (And maybe you’d get lucky enough to catch a sheep shearing like we did!)

My recommendation if you visit is to buy a guide book: they’re only a fiver at the door and, without it, you wouldn’t get as rich an experience. There aren’t plaques or explanations outside every building, and, when we visited, not many staff about (possibly due in part to Covid), so it’s basically essential to get the guide, which is packed with great information about how each building was recreated. And I wanted to buy one too: it’s extremely cheap to visit the museum (we only paid a five pound donation total for entry for all three of us!!). We also stopped into the delightful little cafe on site and the gift shop too – wanting to support the work of the museum. (Also, the baked goods were tasty!)

If, like me, you enjoy learning about social history and people’s daily lives in the past, you’ll love this museum. I hope that you enjoyed this virtual ‘visit’, and let me know what you think of it. I’ve linked some info below if you are planning a visit, as well as some more resources if you want to learn more. 🙂

Stay tuned for another Highland-themed post in the next ‘Madeira Mondays’!

Links:

PS Not Highland Folk Museum related, but last week I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the Loud Poets on their wonderful podcast The Loudcast. As most of you know, part of my job is writing and performing poetry, and this interview was an in-depth conversation about my experiences writing for different audiences, bringing empathy and humor to ‘political poetry’ and lots more. They released the podcast episode just yesterday so wanted to pop it here if you’re interested in checking it out!

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring 18th century history and historical fiction. Follow the blog for a new post every other Monday and thanks for reading!

Madeira Mondays: A (very brief) intro to 18th century medicine

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In the last Madeira Mondays post, we looked at a really riveting Young Adult novel: Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. If you didn’t catch that post, this great little book is historical fiction, inspired by the outbreak of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in…1793 (as it says in the title!). For this week’s post, I had planned on diving into the real history behind yellow fever: what it is, how it spread in the 18th century, and what doctors used to treat it. However, I realized that I couldn’t really talk about that without first doing a brief overview of 18th century medical knowledge in general. Which is a really fascinating and complex subject in itself! Continue reading →

Madeira Mondays: The Yule Candle

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I’m really into Christmas, which is usually a time for me to travel back to the USA to visit family and friends (although, alas, that cannot happen this year). But I’m also into the ritual of the holiday (and holidays in general) and using this time, every winter, to check in with myself and think about the year to come. And I think that’s especially pertinent this year, when it has been a pretty rough year globally (I think we can say!). It’s useful to reflect, right now, on where we’re coming from and moving towards.

I also love that Christmas traditions don’t just give an opportunity to connect with ourselves and our own family/friends, but also with other people who have celebrated the holiday (and more generally, this entire time of year) for centuries.

The drawing room of The Georgian House in Edinburgh, where I volunteer as a historical guide

The next couple of posts are going to be suitably Christmas/wintery themed (I hope that’s okay with everyone!), focusing on different traditions/recipes/things to do with the Georgian/Colonial period. The first one I wanted to mention was: The Yule Candle.

I mentioned yule candles in my post last year, Christmas in a Georgian Townhouse, which is a good general look at Christmas in the 18th century. If you’ve not read that one, definitely have a look for a broader sweep of Christmas traditions in this period.

Here’s what I wrote about Yule Candles last year, in that post:

One tradition practiced by many in this period was the Yule Candle. It was a big white candle lit by the head of the household at sunset on Christmas Eve and then allowed to burn throughout the night. It was believed to be bad luck if it burned out before Christmas morning. In Scotland, the Yule candle was not to be purchased, but given as a gift to the family and typically sat on the dining table where Christmas Eve dinner was eaten.

What I didn’t go into last time, was the deeper historical origins of The Yule Candle, and how it – like most of the 18th century Christmas traditions – had it roots in pagan traditions. As Kathryn Kane notes in her blog post on ‘The Yule Candle in the Regency’:

Yule was a pagan celebration around the winter solstice in which many peoples of Northern Europe had engaged for centuries, long before the birth of Christ. Because this was the time of year with the shortest days and the longest nights, much of the celebration was centered on fire, seen as substitute for the Sun (…)

Basically, pagan ‘Yule’ celebrations were all about fire – bonfires, burning logs. This celebration was calling light back into the world, during these really short, dark days. The Yule Candle was later co-opted and repurposed for Christian celebrations as a symbol of Christ, the ‘light of the world.’ And by the 18th century, the Georgians burned yule candles, yule logs, etc. to celebrate this Christian holiday and the whole festive season. (You can even hear mention of Yule logs in the famous Christmas song ‘Deck the Halls’ written in 1862. ‘See the blazing yule before us…fa la la la la…‘)

If you want to learn more about the ancient rituals of Yuletide, I’d suggest an absolutely beautiful picture book by Susan Cooper and illustrated by Carson Ellis: The Shortest Day. 

It was published last year and it’s a lovely book about celebrations of the winter solstice and also how rituals connect us with previous generations. I loved the grey, wintery colors – which really reminded me of two Decembers ago, when I went to Sweden at Christmas time – contrasted with the warmth of the flickering fires and candles. It’s a perfect seasonal read.

From ‘The Shortest Day’

While I don’t think I’ll be lighting a Yule Candle this year, I do think it’s a very interesting tradition, and I’ll definitely be lighting candles generally! And enjoying their soft glow – welcoming back longer, brighter days into the world.

Recommended further reading:

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring 18th century history and historical fiction. Follow the blog for a new post every Monday and thanks for reading!

 

Madeira Mondays: Inside an 18th century bedroom

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A few weeks back, I took you inside The Georgian House with me and we visited an 18th century parlor. We talked a bit about education, the hobbies and pursuits of the Georgian elites, as well as globes and mapmaking, tea ceremonies and more. If you’re curious to read that post, you can check it out here!

This week, we’re going back into The Georgian House – the recreated 18th century townhouse here in Edinburgh where I volunteer. The townhouse is a ‘show house’, not a traditional museum, so if you were to visit you could see a house fully furnished with 18th century art and objects, giving you a sense of what daily life was like back then for those living in Edinburgh’s New Town. Each room in The Georgian House offers a glimpse into a different aspect of the past, and it’s very hard for me to pick a favorite, but I do love showing visitors around the bedroom, which is where we’re heading today!

The bedroom in The Georgian House

In the photo above, you can see the elegant four-poster bed (made in 1774 for Thomas Hog of Newliston, near Edinburgh). A bed is, of course, totally something you’d expect to find in, well, a bedroom, so no surprise there, but what a lot of guests are surprised by is how multifunctional bedrooms were in the 18th century.

Seating in the bedroom for socializing

These days, I think we tend to think of bedrooms as quite private spaces, perhaps tucked away on the upper floors of houses and not really a space where you’d gather if you had friends over. But – and I could go into this in greater depth in another post – the concept of private, individual spaces was different back then. In the 18th century it was still very common (even in wealthy households) for bedrooms to be shared among members of that family and, as you can see from the photo above, bedrooms were also places for socializing with guests. The bedroom at The Georgian House might have been used as an informal breakfast room, or ladies sitting room – which would have allowed the hosts the show off their four-poster bed – which was a bit of an 18th century status symbol!

Another difference between bedrooms then and now, which guests often find surprising, is that there were no coat hangers during this time period! Clothes were folded up and stored in drawers, rather than hung in wardrobes. Coat hangers weren’t invented until the later part of the 19th century, so you won’t find a wardrobe or a closet in an 18th century bedroom for hanging up your clothes! (This is so interesting to me – how this one invention really changed the whole layout of a space.)

One final thing I wanted to show you in the bedroom is the medicine chest. This is probably my favorite object in the bedroom!

The medicine chest in The Georgian House

Most houses would have had some sort of medicine chest stocked with remedies for minor ailments. A visit from a physician was expensive, and, especially if you were located further outside of the city, it often wasn’t even possible. Or, at least, it would take the doc a long time to reach you! It was common (and I know this was true in Colonial America too) for the lady of the house to take care of the entire household, including servants, if one of them got sick, especially if it wasn’t something major. This medicine chest is from 1830 and retains 22 out of its original 29 bottles. Some of the contents are things we would recognize today – Epsom salts and peppermint oil, for example. Some are things that we definitely wouldn’t be able to get over the counter now, like laudanum, derived from opium.

The chest would have come with detailed instructions about how to use its contents and recommended doses. There were also books available at the time, such as the popular Domestic Medicine by William Buchan (1772), which explained home remedies for all sorts of things. It’s worth a flip through if you’re curious.

There are so many more aspects of the bedroom at The Georgian House that I could go into, but I’ll leave it there for now! I didn’t even touch on personal hygiene, bathing (or lack thereof!) and all that jazz, so if you’d like a post about about that stuff – let me know! In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a couple of recommended further readings, and thank you again for joining me this Monday! At some point in the upcoming weeks, we’re going into the dining room (yay! food!) and the kitchen (yay! more food!) of The Georgian House. See you then!

Recommended Further Reading:

William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine (1772) – Buchan was an Edinburgh physician and this book was popular in both the UK and the soon-to-be USA

Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home 1760-1860 by Jane Nylander (okay, so this one is technically not about Scottish homes of this period, but a lot of the customs were transatlantic and this is a great window into domestic life in this time period)

‘The Edinburgh medicine cabinet and the city high life’, article in The Scotsman newspaper (goes into a lot more detail about the dangerous over-uses of laudanum in the period)

And if you’d like to book tickets to visit The Georgian House, you can do that here. Definitely check their opening times (which have been reduced and changed due to Covid) and they recommend booking in advance! If you fancy coming along on this upcoming Saturday Oct 24th, I’ll be there (hi!) and would love to talk with you more about all things Georgian!

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring 18th century history and historical fiction. Follow the blog for a new post every Monday and thanks for reading!

 

Madeira Mondays: A Visit to a Georgian Parlor

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The fire is crackling and you huddle close to it on a cold Edinburgh morning. Next to you, you hear the scratch of a quill pen as your mother writes a letter and the clink of a silver spoon in a cup as your sister makes tea. Perhaps you’ve got a book in your lap – one of the many being published in Edinburgh these days, a city steeped in Enlightenment thinking. Perhaps it’s a riveting historical novel by Walter Scott. Or maybe you’re not reading at all but doing some needlework, or studying one of the globes – the terrestrial one, perhaps, that shows the ever-changing map of the world: when new discoveries are made, they will be papered over the old ones.

These are the sorts of scenes I like to imagine when I’m volunteering at The Georgian House. I was so delighted to return last week to my volunteer job, as a historical guide at the recreated late-18th century townhouse here in Edinburgh. It was wonderful to be in the house again and, especially, to welcome visitors. As you know from reading this blog, I love chatting with people about daily life in the 18th century  and last week was no different. I had several fascinating conversations with visitors about what sort of pets they might have had in Georgian times, what kind of books they read, and how they drank their tea. People, I think, love to zoom in on these little details – it’s why I love ‘social history’ so much. Learning about dates and about big political movements is, of course, very important – but I usually want to know what people had for breakfast.

A couple of months back, I told you that I’d planned to write a series of blog posts focusing on different rooms within The Georgian House and explaining what they were each used for. I even published the first post: ‘Inside a Georgian Drawing Room.’ Now that the house is opened back up again for visitors, I thought it would be a great time to resume the series and to go room by room, showing you some of my favorite objects in each. I’ll also talk a little bit about what people living and working in an upscale Georgian townhouse would have done in each room.

This week – I wanted to show you the parlor.

The Parlor at The Georgian House in Edinburgh

A parlor is like a family sitting room. It’s a living room, basically, in contrast to the more formal, grand drawing room that I talked about in my other post. This is where the family would relax and pursue hobbies, like in that scene I described above. They might write letters, read books or the newspaper, or have friends over for tea.

Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin; A Lady Taking Tea; Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

Afternoon tea was a popular activity and there was a lot of ceremony attached to it. It was one of the ‘polite accomplishments’ of young women to be able to blend a good cup of tea (green or black or a mix) for her guests. Tea was taxed in this period (we know all about that in America, right? The colonists weren’t too happy about it! See: the Boston Tea Party. I can definitely do a post on what exactly the ‘Boston Tea Party’ was, and what led up to it, if you’re curious). Since it was so expensive, it was kept under lock and key in caddies or drawers.

The table all set up for tea – note the tall, almost trophy-looking thing which was the ‘water urn’. That’s where they kept the hot water. It held a piece of iron inside that was heated on the fire and then inserted inside, to keep the water hot.

Kids were also allowed in the parlor and would have spent time with their parents in this room. Their mom might have taught all her children the basics of reading and writing, but of course education was then rapidly split based on gender. While both elite boys and girls would have things like music and dance lessons, boys would also learn about history, geography, languages (like Latin), and philosophy. They could go to a university and study law, medicine, theology etc. Girls, on the other hand, were taught domestic things  to prepare them to be wives (how to be a good host, how to sew, how to deal with servants and with basic household budgets maybe). We’re talking about elite women and men here, the wealthiest members of society.

These diverse educations were so that they prepared men and women to enter what was believed to be their sphere: for boys, that was the public sphere. For girls: the private, domestic one. (This distinction is crucial, I think, to understanding why, for instance, women had such trouble securing the right to vote many decades later. The public, political sphere was thought to be a man’s domain. So when he voted, he was voting for the entire household, in theory. Yes, this way of thinking is repressive, of course. But that’s how it was. In general, people were not given equal access to education, not just based on gender, but also race and class).

In addition to receiving an education in this room, kids (and adults) might also have played games. There’s a chess board on display and a popular game for kids was ‘ball and cup’ (which is where you try to get a ball…into a cup. But trust me, it’s harder than it sounds!).

A chess board from the period and, above that, a little girl’s ‘sampler’. Samplers were common in this period and they were places where young girls would practice their stitching and their alphabet. Parents really did put them on display like this, to show what their daughter had made and how accomplished their little girl was.

In our parlor, we also have two globes on display: celestial (mapping the heavens) and terrestrial (mapping the land). The Georgians loved symmetry and it was very in vogue to have not one but two globes on display, if you could afford it. Not just to show off, but also, you know, symmetry. The globes at The Georgian House are from 1810. As I mentioned earlier, globes were constantly being updated, as new landmasses were being ‘discovered’ and added to the map, and as boundaries of nations changed. So sometimes it’s difficult for us to date globes accurately, because they were re-papered to be kept up to date.

The Terrestrial Globe at The Georgian House

There are so many things to see in the parlor alone, and many of them I’ve not mentioned here! If you’re curious to see more, please do come and visit us at The Georgian House. I work every other Saturday (and will be there this weekend, September 26th) if you’d like to come and say hi! They’re operating at reduced hours and there’s a pre-booking system in place – you can book your tickets to visit here!

In the upcoming weeks I’ll be focusing on other rooms – including the kitchen and the bedroom – so if there are any specific things you’re curious about, in terms of those rooms, let me know and I can try to highlight them in those posts.

Recommended Reading:

PS Today’s Featured Image is ‘A Tea Party’ by Joseph van Aken. Photo Credit: The Manchester Art Gallery

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring 18th century history and historical fiction. Follow the blog for a new post every Monday and thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madeira Mondays: Mid-Year Wrap-Up

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It’s the middle of the year (June) and the middle of the month (the 15th), so I figured what better time to do a mid-year recap of all the ‘Madeira Mondays’ that I’ve posted so far this year, as well as a look ahead at what topics I’m hoping to cover in the second half of 2020.

This blog series is all about early American history and historical fiction, but the topics I’ve looked at range pretty far and wide, so I’ve organized this list in terms of category (‘On Films and TV Shows’ ‘On books’ ‘Recipes’ etc). You can easily scroll down to the category that might be of most interest to you. I’d also love any suggestions and feedback on which topics you’d be curious about as I move forward – more on that at the end of the post!

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Display of items that would have been found in an 18th century American shop, at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia (November, 2019)

Madeira Mondays January-June 2020

On Films and TV Shows

Washington miniseries Episode 1; Washington miniseries Episodes 2-3 (Reviews of The History Channel’s new miniseries about the life of America’s first President, George Washington)

Behind the Mask (Review of film set in Revolutionary War Philadelphia, directed by Chad Burns)

Grace and Frankie and…John Adams (A look at the popular TV series Grace and Frankie and its surprising links to early American history and John Adams)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Film review of Celine Sciamma’s 2019 film about a romance between two women in 18th century France)

18th century Fashion on RuPaul’s Drag Race (A look at how drag queen Gigi Goode incorporates 18th century fashion into her outfits)

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Scene from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, featuring Noemie Merlant as Marianne (right) and Adele Haenel as Heloise (left)

On Books

Thomas Jefferson, James Hemings, and French Cooking (Book review of Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brûlée by James Craughwell, about how Jefferson and his enslaved cook James Hemings brought French cuisine to America)

Historical Short Stories (On Karen Russell and her historical fiction short stories)

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold (Book review of non-fiction book about the lives of the five women who were killed by Jack the Ripper)

Celia Garth (Book review of this novel by Gwen Bristow, first published in the 1950’s and set in Revolutionary Charleston, South Carolina)

Emily Dickinson’s Poem about Waiting (Analysis of a poem by Dickinson)

Recipes

A Forgotten 18th Century Drink (Making ‘flip’, an 18th century warmed rum drink)

A Cheap and Delicious 18th Century Recipe (Making potato cakes from an 18th century recipe)

Discovering an 18th Century Energy Drink (Making ‘switchel’, a refreshing summertime drink popular in early America)

Historical Research

Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (A-F); The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (G-P); Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (R-Z) (A series of posts about the best words from Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a compendium of 18th century slang)

Hamilton wasn’t wearing any underwear (An in-depth look at 18th century men’s underwear)

The Poetry of Phillis Wheatley (A look at the life of Phillis Wheatley, a young African-American writer who was a celebrity in 18th century Britain and America and one of the first American poets)

The Surprisingly Interesting History of Tomato Ketchup (A look at ketchup’s history, from ancient China through to today)

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Exhibitions and Historic Sites

Runaway Slaves in 18th Century Louisiana (A visit to The Cabildo museum in New Orleans Louisiana in January 2020, and a look at their exhibition Le Kèr Creole (The Creole Heart): Runaway Slaves, Music, and Memory in Louisiana)

Inside a Georgian Drawing Room (A visit to The Georgian House in Edinburgh, run by The National Trust of Scotland, where I volunteer as a costumed historical guide)

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The Drawing Room at The Georgian House where I volunteer in Edinburgh, Scotland

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I’ve really enjoyed writing and researching these posts and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them. So what’s next for Madeira Mondays? Since I have a new book coming out next month, there will be a couple of posts on the research I did for that and how I went about writing some of the poems (many of the poems are inspired by history). I also have plans to read two books by Laurie Halse Anderson in the near future. One of these I’ve read before – Chains – about an enslaved young girl in 18th century New York City who gets involved with the Revolution. The other book – Fever, 1793 – is about the outbreak of yellow fever in Philadelphia in the late 18th century, and I’ve never read this one. But I know Anderson is a brilliant writer (she’s most famous for her 1999 novel Speak, which is a really harrowing but beautifully written book about a teenager’s experience with sexual assault).

In terms of shows, I plan to watch Dickinson (the new TV series loosely inspired by the life of Emily Dickinson, which looks like a lot of silly fun). And, in honor of the upcoming 4th of July, I’d like to do a post or two about the musical 1776, about the signing of the Declaration of Independence (I also researched this musical as part of my PhD, so I’ve got a lot to say about it!).

Which posts have been your favorites thus far? Are there any historical fiction books/TV series/films that I should know about? I’ve also toyed with the idea of asking some of the Early American historians that I met through my PhD to do a guest post (or perhaps an interview) for the blog, so let me know if that’s something you’d be curious to see!

As always, thanks so much for reading. Hope to see you next Monday! x

 

Madeira Mondays: Inside a Georgian Drawing Room

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The novel Jane Eyre begins with young Jane sitting in the ‘drawing room’ of her aunt’s house. When I first read Jane Eyre as a kid, I remember pausing on that phrase – ‘drawing room’ – and wondering what exactly it meant. I gathered from context that a drawing room was some sort of living room, but why was it called a ‘drawing’ room? Was it a room where you went to draw stuff? I genuinely had no idea.

If you’ve ever heard the phrase before and been similarly confused – fear not! For today’s Madeira Mondays, we’re going inside a recreated 18th century drawing room, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about what these rooms were for, what sort of things you might find in them, and, yes, why the heck they are called drawing rooms in the first place! (Hint: it doesn’t have anything to do with drawing pictures!)

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A middle-class drawing room in London in 1841, painted by James Holland. Accessed via Wikipedia.

As a bit of background: before the Covid-19 shut-downs, I was volunteering weekly at The Georgian House in Edinburgh, sometimes even in costume (more on this in my posts about 18th century Christmas celebrations)! The Georgian House is a beautiful, restored 18th century town home: recreated to look as it did in 1800, when the Lamont family lived there, and it’s filled with furniture, art, and objects from the period. I cannot recommend enough a visit, once everything is open and running again, if you’re ever in town and at all interested in this time period (or simply want to learn more about how people of the past lived their daily lives!).

So let’s step into the Lamont’s drawing room at The Georgian House and learn about what this room was for!

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The drawing room at The Georgian House

Firstly, what is a ‘drawing room’?

Historically, a drawing room was a room in a large private house where visitors could be entertained. In the case of The Georgian House, the drawing room is the largest room in the home (30 ft x 18 ft and 14 ft high) and definitely the grandest – it was a formal entertaining space, furnished grandly to impress the guests of the Lamont family. The family would have spent the most money on furnishing this room in particular.

(For context about the family, John Lamont was a wealthy landowner. The square where The Georgian House is located, Charlotte Square, was home, in the Georgian period, to wealthy families but they were not necessarily all from the aristocracy. Some were prosperous lawyers, bankers, merchants etc.)

Why is it called a drawing room?

The name ‘drawing room’ comes from the word ‘withdrawing’. After a formal dinner, the ladies would all withdraw from the dining table to the drawing room upstairs, to socialize. The gentlemen would stay at the table and continue to drink (heavily), before rejoining the ladies later in the evening.

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Yours truly (in costume) gazing out the window of the drawing room at The Georgian House. (Ignore the not very period appropriate cars parked outside the window!)

What sort of activities would happen in the drawing room?

This space was more for evening activities, such as balls or larger gatherings, but the lady of the house might have used the room during the day, if she had some friends over for tea.

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Me (right) in costume as Georgina Lamont (the family’s oldest daughter), next to fellow volunteers portraying John Lamont and a visiting guest, in the drawing room during our ‘Meet the Lamonts’ event last December. (BTW the Christmas tree, while lovely, was not Georgian and didn’t come into popular use until the Victorian period!)

At a party, the chairs would have all been pushed to the walls, to make space for dancing. When the ladies were rejoined by the men, there might have been card playing, or chess. In addition to dancing! Someone also might want to sing. Playing an instrument was an important social accomplishment of the time for the upper classes, and men and women might get up and sing a song or two. It’s my understanding that it didn’t matter so much how well you sang – this was more an opportunity for young people of marriageable age (and their families) to get a good long look at each other! But this was also a time when you had to really make your own fun (and, often, your own music!) so playing the piano could provide entertainment as well.

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Portrait of Anastasia Robinson, circa 1727, via Wikimedia

There is so much more to say about the ornate drawing room at The Georgian House, and so many objects there to delve into, but I’ll save that for another time. I had hoped to do a series of posts where I look at different rooms in a Georgian household – parlor, dining room, kitchen etc., using The Georgian House as an example. But unfortunately I don’t have all the pictures I wanted, to be able to show you all that I’d like, so we’ll have to wait until the house has opened back up again and I can get in there and take some more photos! I promise it’ll be worth the wait.

If you’re looking for more reading in the meantime, check out The Georgian House’s blog which featured another fellow volunteer (and mega talented costumer!), Emma Harvey, talking about 18th century women’s fashions.

(PS today’s Featured Image is by Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the Elder, ‘The Family of the Duke of Penthièvre (“The Cup of Chocolate”)’, circa 1768, accessed via Wikipedia)

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring Early American history and historical fiction. I’m not a historian, but an author and poet who is endlessly fascinated by this time period. I am also currently writing/researching a novel set during the American Revolution and recently finished a Doctorate of Fine Art looking at how creative writers access America’s eighteenth-century past. Follow the blog for a new post every Monday and thanks for reading!

 

 

Madeira Mondays: Christmas in a Georgian Townhouse

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For the last few months, I have been volunteering at The Georgian House. Situated in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town, The Georgian House is a restored late 18th century townhouse, once owned by John Lamont (the 18th chief of the Clan Lamont). Today it is a show house, designed to show what life was like for those above and below stairs in 18th century Edinburgh. Each room is full of Georgian furniture, rugs, knickknacks and art, giving you the genuine feeling of stepping back in time.

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Step on into the drawing room at The Georgian House!

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The Dining Room

I have loved volunteering there and will do a longer post next year on what to expect from a visit to The Georgian House (and why you should definitely pop in to say hello if you’re ever in Edinburgh!), but I wanted to tell you about this month in particular because we’ve been doing some pretty cool stuff this Christmas! For one thing, I have been dressing up, along with some of the other volunteers, as members of the Lamont family for our event ‘Meet the Lamonts’. Visitors could interact with us (we’re in character the entire time!) and learn about life for the Lamont family and their servants. I was dressed as Georgina, the 2nd daughter of John Lamont, but we also had people portraying the butler, our housekeeper, the cook, and more.

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Me (as Georgina Lamont) looking out our window at Charlotte Square, which would have been under construction during the Georgian period

The house was also decorated for Christmas and part of our job was to discuss with the visitors how a family like the Lamonts would have celebrated Christmas in Georgian Edinburgh.

So how would the Georgians celebrate Christmas?

For the rest of this post, I’ll talk a bit about Christmas festivities in 18th century Edinburgh and then next week, we’ll look at how it was celebrated over in the American colonies. Let’s explore!

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The staircase at The Georgian House, decorated for Christmas

Firstly, when is Christmas?

For the Georgians, Christmas was not two days (Christmas eve and day) but in fact an entire season. Christmas was a month long celebration that involved parties, dances, meals etc. It ran from December 6th (St Nicholas Day) until January 6th (Twelfth Night). Our modern shortened Christmas came into being when employers needed their workers to work throughout the festive period (remember how angry Scrooge gets when his employee, Bob Cratchit, wants the day off for Christmas?) So it was a festive, party-filled period for socializing and family get-togethers, which readers of Jane Austen novels might be familiar with, as the characters are always visiting friends and family (and celebrating!) during this time of year.

How was it different from modern Christmas celebrations?

A lot of the Christmas traditions that we associate with the holiday today did not come into practice until the Victorian period. The Christmas tree, for example, was not widely practiced outside of Germany until Victorian times, when Prince Albert famously introduced the tradition into English society. Christmas cards as well did not really come in until the Victorian period. We didn’t have Santa Claus as we know him yet either (more on that next week).

They did however sing Christmas carols. Elite young ladies and gentlemen would often be taught to play an instrument, and the family could gather round and sing. ‘Joy to the World’ was already around, as was ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’. (I wonder if people got as sick of hearing these same tunes as I do of modern Christmas songs…)

People of all social classes could decorate their homes for Christmas because decorations were often natural elements brought in from the outside. People brought in evergreens (holly, mistletoe, ivy etc.) and festooned the house with them. Greenery was a symbol of the promise that life would return in spring (if that sounds vaguely pagan, then you’re right! The idea comes from pagan traditions.).

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The mantle in the parlor decorated for Christmas

One tradition practiced by many in this period was the Yule Candle. It was a big white candle lit by the head of the household at sunset on Christmas Eve and then allowed to burn throughout the night. It was believed to be bad luck if it burned out before Christmas morning. In Scotland, the Yule candle was not to be purchased, but given as a gift to the family and typically sat on the dining table where Christmas Eve dinner was eaten. And speaking of which…

What did they eat?

Obviously this would vary widely depending on region and social class. For a wealthy family like the Lamonts, vension might have been the meat of choice. Other typical Christmas foods were cheeses, soups, and minced pies (which were made with real mince in them! And similar spices to our modern mince pies: cloves, mace etc.). A popular drink was a Wassail bowl, similar to a mulled wine: cooked with spices and sweetened wine or brandy, served in a large bowl garnished with apples. I’ll talk a bit more about Christmas food next week, in my post about Christmas in the American colonies.

So that is a bit about Christmas festivities in Georgian times! I hope that it was informative and if you want to pay a visit to The Georgian House, I believe it will be decorated until January 5th. Be sure to check opening times on The National Trust’s Website before you go! Alas, I will not be there dressed up (our ‘Meet the Lamonts’ reenactment events are finished for the year), but there will be helpful volunteer guides in each room and it would be fun and Christmas-y nonetheless. A lot of the information from this blog post I learned from a very informative little booklet The Georgian House has made this year about Georgian Christmas traditions, including recipes, which you can pick up there for a small donation if you’re curious! I have also included some further reading below if you want to learn more about Christmas in Georgian Britain. Next week, we’re sailing across the Atlantic to British America!

Thanks very much for reading. I hope you’re having a great holiday season. Cheers!

PS

If you’re still looking for Christmas gifts, might I suggest giving the gift of poetry? I have a new poetry pamphlet coming out next year (!) and my publisher, the wonderful Edinburgh-based Stewed Rhubarb, is offering a subscription service called marvelously The Fellowship of the Stewed Rhubarb. Members of the ‘fellowship’ get each of Stewed Rhubarb’s new poetry pamphlets mailed out to them as they are published next year. That’s four, new Scottish poetry books (mine included!) which will arrive in the mail to you throughout 2020. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

This subscription service is a new initiative to support Scottish poetry and writers like me, and if we don’t get enough subscribers, we won’t be able to go forward with the project. So if you have a literature lover in your life, or if you are one yourself, it would be lovely if you joined us! Support the arts in Scotland and get four great books out of the deal. You can find all the details here. Thanks!

Further Christmas reading:

Blogs:

‘Christmas 1819’ from All Things Georgian blog

‘Christmas in Jane Austen’s Time’ from Regina Jeffers’ blog

18th century podcast Episode 25: Christmas

Books:

Christmas: A Biography by Judith Flanders

The Keeping of Christmas: 1760-1840, published by Fairfax House in York, England, text and design by Peter Brown (I got this little book as part of Fairfax’s house exhibition ‘The Keeping of Christmas’ and it’s very useful. Can’t seem to find it online, but here’s the link to Fairfax House)

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Okay so it’s not Georgian, but I believe that everyone should read this. It’s entertaining, compassionate and timely. I re-read it every year)

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring Early American history and historical fiction. I’m not a historian, but an author and poet who is endlessly fascinated by this time period. I am also currently writing/researching a novel set during the American Revolution and recently finished a Doctorate of Fine Art looking at how creative writers access America’s eighteenth-century past. Follow the blog for a new post every Monday and thanks for reading!