Kathleen Marple Kalb's Blog, page 25

PUT ON YOUR LONG JOHNS

A lot of us have been digging out the long johns in the last few days, as the temperatures drop across the U.S. and it really starts to feel like winter. For most people, long johns are a lot more underclothing than we normally wear, and it feels good to put a layer of wool, silk or high-tech fabric between our skin and the cold wind. But for a lot of women in the late 19th century, something that looked a lot like our long johns would actually have been a sleek new thing.
From the Regency until the late Victorian period, women wore long drawers, plus several layers of petticoats, and at least a chemise, corset and corset-cover on top. Even though everything but the corset was made of some very thin woven fabric, there was still a lot of it, and you still had to get it all tucked in and smoothed down before you put on the next layer. And the next.
So replacing the first layer or two with one piece of flexible knit was a real upgrade. The union suit was originally a one-piece flannel garment, proposed as a Victorian dress-reform idea. But it quickly evolved and spread as people realized just how efficient and comfortable it was. Flannel was gone pretty fast, replaced with stretchy knit, in cotton, wool or even silk. The styling became more streamlined, too, closer-fitted, with fewer fastenings and seams, all to make it a comfortable and sleek first layer.
Not too comfy, though! Victorians were more than a little suspicious of anything that enabled people – especially female people – to get rid of layers of clothing. Which is why the ads for union suits led with a health pitch, not a comfort or style one. Style was definitely part of it, though; the union suit really took off in the 1870s when women were wearing very snug dresses and the chemise and drawers created all kinds of nasty bumps under what was supposed to be a smooth fit.
By the late 1890s the union suit had evolved to “combinations” – as in a combination of chemise and drawers – and it wasn’t really scandalous at all. It was a very practical first layer for anyone who wanted her clothes to fit smoothly. Women always topped them with the corset, sometimes corset-covers, and layers of petticoats, so it wasn’t exactly traveling light, but the thin knit was a lot easier to manage than tucking down chemise and drawers. Those were often still part of the mix somewhere…but combinations were quickly becoming the standard start.
Soon, though, women would get bored with pulling their stockings on over an extra layer of knit…and the combinations would start creeping up the legs. By the 1910s, they’re above the knee, and the whole thing is quickly evolving out of existence. Flappers didn’t want to run around in their mothers’ underwear, and those knitted combinations went out the window with long hair, replaced by silky chemises and knickers – but only one layer, thank you!
So when you pull out the long johns, remember, you’re actually putting on a little bit of history in addition to all that extra warmth!

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UNDER MY UMBRELLA

Umbrellas have been around pretty much as long as humans have been able to grab a big leaf and try to keep the rain off their heads. We know they had them in Ancient Egypt and China, and you can see them popping up in art through the ages. By the late 19th century, though, umbrellas and parasols were classic lady’s accessories, with all kinds of interesting resonance.
It’s not surprising that the parasol, particularly, became a status symbol. Elaborate sun or rain shades were the prerogative of all kinds of very important people in the ancient world and other cultures, too. Priests, royals, viziers and more all had a shade and somebody to carry it for them.
What’s intriguing about our Victorian lady’s parasol is that she’s carrying it…and that she looks so good and determined doing it. Fashion plates and illustrations from the time show just about every outdoor costume accompanied by its own matching parasol, which would have been quite an investment in money and effort. Not only that, they show women holding those parasols in very strong and confident poses…especially striding forward, using the parasol almost as a fancy walking-stick.
That’s especially interesting because those fashion drawings were intended for women; they’re sending a clear message about how a woman is supposed to look, and feel, in her outfit. It’s very much the New Woman idea; she’s an independent lady walking through her day and carrying her own parasol, thank you!
Still, though, parasol also lends itself to more demure scenes, and there’s plenty of that too: a miss shyly shielding herself from prying eyes, or peering flirtatiously out from the safety of her shade. Of course, we now know the safety was quite literal: the parasol was the only way you had to protect yourself from a burn in an era before effective sunscreens. Practicality, though, wasn’t the issue for a lot of illustrators; a pretty woman appearing both shy and interested was.
Umbrellas have their own whole set of considerations. Women in the fashion illustrations are very clearly carrying parasols – the items are much too small to be intended as protection against the rain. Umbrellas aren’t really fun and feminine the way a parasol is. Made of sturdy oiled cloth rather than frilly light fabrics, they’re determinedly functional.
Fun isn’t really a consideration with an umbrella, at least not if you’re just trying to walk to work without getting drenched. Unlike parasols, umbrellas usually appear in very practical scenes, ads touting the virtues of a particular model, or as part of a larger display of rain gear. There’s nothing especially flirty about fighting the wind to keep your umbrella right-side-out.
Well, with one notable exception. A gentleman could, in perfect propriety, offer to share his umbrella with a lady on a wet day. Of course, sharing an umbrella requires one to be far closer to her swain than the usual walking arm-in-arm, and pulls the couple into what is essentially a closed space. There’s a reason umbrella scenes were popular in books, and later movies, for so long. You’ve got a perfectly legitimate reason for your romantic leads to be in close quarters with nowhere for all of that chemistry to go. Something’s going to happen!
Now that you mention it, I guess I’m going to have to find a way to send Ella and the Duke out on a rainy day!

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THANKSGIVING RAGAMUFFINS

Most Americans probably grew up celebrating Thanksgiving the way we do now: eat too much and fall asleep in front of a football game (or marathon of a favorite show). We probably didn’t grow up celebrating it with trick-or-treating.
Unless you grew up in some parts of New York. If you did, Thanksgiving Ragamuffins are probably no news to you.
To the rest of us, including this rather history-savvy Scotch-Irish Western Pennsylvania girl, they certainly are.
From around 1870, especially in Irish neighborhoods, kids would dress up in their scruffiest clothes, or even mom’s dresses and makeup, on Thanksgiving morning and head out. “Anything for Thanksgiving?” they’d call, as they knocked on doors, begging for candy and money.
It’s unclear where it started; it seems to have something to do with the then-new Thanksgiving holiday – first celebrated nationwide in 1864 -- and the much older tradition of trick-or-treating on Halloween. Whatever sparked it, the kids had a wonderful time, dashing around and collecting pennies and treats. Of course, it also got more than a little out of hand at times, especially once bonfires and the occasional street fight became part of the festivities.
In some neighborhoods, local leaders tried to control the tradition by turning it into Ragamuffin Parades, which looked a lot like our modern Halloween processions. The costumes that started as a relatively well-off kid’s idea of a beggar eventually evolved to include pirates, bandits and even movie characters.
But as time went on, and Halloween became more of the official “dress up and get candy” holiday, Thanksgiving Ragamuffins faded. City leaders were no longer amused by the idea of grubby urchins running around on Thanksgiving morning begging for money and treats, or even just marching down the street. In the 1930s, no less an authority than the New York Times published a series of articles intended to discourage the Ragamuffin Parades.
The Times and changing attitudes helped knock the parades down, but what really sent them into history was something a bit more spectacular: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. When you can go see the giant balloons, the Rockettes, and – not for nothing – get a wave from Santa, why would you bother pounding on the neighbor’s door for a stray piece of candy?
The ragamuffins are still out there, though.
A few neighborhoods in the City and Westchester still have Ragamuffin Parades on Thanksgiving. There’s even a street named “Ragamuffin Way” in honor of the event in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
And the ragamuffins live on in the memories of the kids who spent their Thanksgiving mornings begging for treats…and like to tell the grandchildren how they didn’t start the holiday by just sitting down in front of the TV and watching the balloons go by.
There’s nothing like a great “when I was your age” story to start the holiday…and unlike the “walking barefoot through three feet of snow to school” one, it’s actually true!
I hope this post is a fun start to YOUR Thanksgiving. A very happy and safe holiday to you and yours. And always, always, thank you for reading!

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LET YOUR HAIR DOWN

Never mind the glimpse of stocking…there was something much more shocking that a woman could do in the 19th Century: take down her hair.
Of course, by that time, women had been wearing their long hair pulled back in some way for millennia. Sometimes it was in braids, usually covered by a hood or a veil, as you’ve seen in medieval and Renaissance art. But by the Victorian era, adult women usually wore their hair up in some kind of knot, more or less elaborate or puffy depending on the lady and the situation.
Even braids, worn down and not pinned up into knot or crown, were unusual. Many, if not all, women wore their hair loosely braided for sleep, so a loose braid was associated with the bedroom…and you don’t need Queen Victoria to tell you anything that made people think about THAT was a no-no.
Speaking of Queen Victoria, there’s a famous Franz Xaver Winterhalter painting of her with her hair falling down. Famous now, that is. She had it made for Prince Albert’s 24th birthday, during the early romantic years of their marriage, and for more than a century, no one outside the Royal Family saw it. The painting, and all it represented, were supposed to stay a secret between the couple.
Because hair down is sexy. Even in our liberated world, the sight of a woman (or man, for that matter) with lots of silky, shiny hair falling around is a very appealing thing. Far more so in a world where it was an event to see a female ankle. The illustrations of the time suggest that male artists, at least, spent an awful lot of time fantasizing about women letting their hair down for them.
No wonder. We’re wired that way. You can look up the studies if you’re into that, but scientists have found that long, shiny hair reads to our primate brains as a sign of a healthy reproductive partner. Brains of all genders, I might add, which explains why many ladies like those costume dramas where guys run around with flowing locks.
With all of that going on, it’s no surprise that adult women in the very repressed 1800s kept their crowning glory under control. “Hair up, skirts down,” was the public announcement that a girl in her late teens was an adult. We’d now consider it more than a little sexist, but both meant that she was no longer a child, and therefore someone whose long hair and legs might arouse the wrong kind of interest.
All of that – and more – is in the room in one of my favorite scenes between Ella and her swain, the Duke. I’m not telling you when it takes place to avoid a potential spoiler, but they haven’t seen each other in a while, and they mark the happy reunion with a fencing match. That would be enough subtext, but Ella’s hair comes loose toward the end, spilling in strawberry-blonde waves. After she gives him a draw (and he knows it!) he stares at her for a moment, realizing that he’s never seen her hair down before.
They were already strongly attracted to each other, but that moment seals the deal for him. And now he – and we – will have to wait and see if he gets another chance to see that hair…

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...AND I GOT THE T-SHIRT

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
You’ve probably seen or heard the Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quote at least once – with or without proper credit – and you may even have a mug or t-shirt with the words emblazoned on it. I know I do: the shirt I wear when I need a little extra steel in my spine.
But do you know where it comes from?
I’ll never forget where I was when I read it for the first time: a college freshman, I’d talked my way into a course on women’s history in early colonial New England, and we were reading Ulrich’s classic GOOD WIVES. I’d been devouring the stories of real women who were worlds away from the granite Puritans I expected, when the author moved into a discussion of some of the ways women could run afoul of the law or the church, which were essentially the same thing.
Getting into trouble, you see, was one of the very few ways a woman’s name would come down to us as more than a birth, marriage or death record.
Remember, women were essentially the legal property of their father or husband in most cases. The only woman who might have some limited public agency of her own was a widow, or a wife running her husband’s business under his name and with his approval. So you just didn’t see many females in the record. Church and court archives are a very big source for historians in pre-modern times, especially before the era of wide literacy, because most folks weren’t keeping diaries – never mind documenting their daily on Insta.
So in one sense, it’s a simple and perfect statement of fact. Well-behaved women, those who don’t break or challenge the rules, but stay home and raise their families without getting into any kind of trouble, aren’t going to show up in the record. They don’t make history.
But of course, it’s also an incredibly memorable line, and female empowerment at its finest. Even clueless late-adolescent me knew that!
Ulrich knew it too. She originally wrote the line in a 1976 journal article on Puritan funeral customs, and used it again later in that book I read in college. Eventually, she got the questionable pleasure of seeing her words attributed to everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Eleanor Roosevelt. It got so weird that in 2007, she actually wrote a book about the quote, and real, not always well-behaved, women who made history.
Which brings us to another truth: it’s really all about the line.
You can propose the perfect academic thesis, lay out years of elaborate research, and write reams of copy about your very important findings…but if you don’t describe it in a memorable way, it won’t get much attention. My newsroom colleagues put it like this: it doesn’t matter how important it is, if it’s not interesting, nobody cares.
So credit also goes to Professor Ulrich for nailing the line.
Which brings us to one last thing. Credit. As a journalist, and now an author, myself, I’m a little finicky about this one. If you’re going to use someone’s work, you credit them. So the next time somebody admires your “Well-Behaved Women” shirt, mug, or bumper sticker, make sure you tell them who said it first. Thank you, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich!

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G-D BLESS THE DRUMMER BOY

His name was Clarence McKenzie and he was twelve years old.
He was a drummer boy in the New York State Militia, and he died in a training camp mishap weeks after lying about his age – with his father’s consent – and enlisting to fight for the Union in 1861.
Clarence McKenzie of Brooklyn became a symbol of the boys who didn’t come home from the Civil War, and you can still see statues of him today as a reminder of the terrible cost of the conflict. But in Clarence McKenzie, and so many like him, you can also see something else:
Timelines.
If you’re just a child when you enlist to fight an existential war, and you’re lucky enough to survive, you’re going to be around to tell that tale for a very long time. To remember it, and allow its effects to shape your life, and your country’s life.
We tend to think of the late 19th century (at least I do!) as a sort of fun Gay Nineties break between the strife and misery of the Civil War period and the wholesale destruction of the Great War, as it was called by many of the people who lived it.
But the Civil War, as Mr. Faulkner so famously said, “wasn’t even past” for many people alive in 1899, and there were plenty who remembered and carried scars, physical and mental. So it comes as a shock, but not a surprise, when jovial sports columnist Preston Dare admits, in the opening scene of A FATAL FIRST NIGHT, that he was a drummer boy at Gettysburg.
Preston has always been one of my favorite characters; a sort of fantasy dad figure who looks like Frank Deford and treats Ella the way some of my beloved relatives and colleagues have treated me. He’s enough older than Ella that no one would think of him as taking anything other than paternal interest.
So in the way of writers, I was plotting out timelines: if Ella was born in 1865, how old should Preston be? As I played with the dates, I realized that the Civil War had to have some impact on him. Maybe a big one. We know Preston as a standup guy: smart, determined and fiercely protective of his family of choice. We don’t know a lot about his early life, other than that he lost his wife and child in a cholera outbreak 30 years ago.
Like many men of his time (and ours), Preston isn’t in the habit of discussing his feelings or his backstory. Ella and her cousin Tommy take him as he is, and are thankful for his presence in their lives. Ella, especially, knows not to ask questions Preston doesn’t want to answer.
Which makes that moment in the dressing room a true stunner for them. (It’s the second big shock of the night…but I’m not going to spoil the other one for you!) Preston has just admitted something that we, and they, probably should have suspected, given his age: the Civil War is not just a story in the history books for him.
It’s a reminder for them, and all of us, that while we may live in one particular moment in history, we aren’t independent of the rest of it. Every one of us lives in a timeline…and today will someday just be a point on that line.

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LET'S PLAY DRESS UP

Never mind the mini peanut butter cups, the best part of Halloween for me has always been the costumes. I love to put on a fun outfit (and I always go for the tulle and glitter, sorry!) and pretend to be someone else for a night. The Victorians loved dress-up too, and by the Gilded Age, people really went wild.
Fancy dress, as it was often called then, is mostly a Halloween or maybe New Year’s Eve thing for us. But in the 19th century, costume balls could happen anytime, and often did. Queen Victoria herself loved the sight of her prince dressed up as a knight-errant, and she and Albert managed to overcome their dislike of Court society for the sake of a great big party in May 1842. The Bal Costume was intended to revitalize the depressed Spitalfields silk industry…but it also gave the royals and their friends a chance to play.
Victoria and Albert were Philippa of Hainault and Edward III (it’s no mistake that HE got to be King for a night!) in full 1300s regalia, and everyone else was expected to dress in Late Middle Ages style too. Or, more accurately, Late Middle Ages style filtered through Romantic Era ideas of knights and their ladies. It was still such a great time that Victoria had her favorite artist, Sir Edwin Landseer, immortalize them in their outfits. That was their most famous dress-up night…but not the only one. They also had a Georgian ball in 1845, and a Restoration one in 1851. If you notice that those are all time periods where men showed a good deal of leg in hose or breeches, it’s not a coincidence: Victoria really, really enjoyed looking at Albert. Queen’s prerogative, right?
The century’s most famous fancy-dress event was probably Mrs. Vanderbilt’s Costume Ball in March of 1883. Not only was it a social power play, enabling hostess Alva Smith Vanderbilt to wrest the queen’s crown from Mrs. Astor of 400 fame, it was also an opportunity for everyone involved to engage in absolutely flagrant displays of wealth. Let’s just say they had a whole different aesthetic than the old-money New Englanders who wore Grandpa’s overcoat because it was still good. The big winner was probably Mrs. Alice Vanderbilt, who sported a battery-powered Worth gown as “Electric Light.” Most of the guests were content to light it up with their jewels.
It’s tough to top that, but if anyone could, it’s the Romanovs. In 1903, the last tsar and his empress celebrated 300 years of their dynasty by dressing up old-school. The country was already well into the economic and governmental mess that led to the Revolution…but the folks at the top seized the chance for truly insane extravagance. Unimaginably expensive fabrics, priceless pearls thrown around like Mardi Gras beads…and an emerald the size of a saucer on Empress Alexandra’s dress. The surviving photos still show her looking miserable.
For most folks, though, then as now, dressing up was just for fun. People scrounged whatever interesting pieces they could, created an outfit, and got their party on. It wasn’t quite as good as today, though: no kid-size candy to steal!

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LIGHTS ON

One of the great pleasures of “spooky season” is when the sun sets early and the streetlamps come on at dinnertime. In the nineteenth century, before Daylight Saving Time, it was even more noticeable.
While by the end of the century, even the poorest homes had some kind of indoor lighting, if only a few candles, days really were shorter. Every minute that candle, oil lamp or gas fixture was lit meant money burned. So not only were there literally fewer hours of light, there was less time to work.
Even now, the moment when the streetlamps come on is a little bit magical. It was more so in the 1800s, because indoor lighting wasn’t nearly as efficient as it is now, and the difference between day and night was much more dramatic.
For some of the newest New Yorkers, it may even have seemed quite literally magical. If you’d come to the City from a small farming community, whether upstate or overseas, those gas or electric lamps were like nothing you’d ever seen. Just one more amazing sight in a new world full of them.
Native New Yorkers, though, were used to streetlamps. The City went into lighting early – and big. In the late 1600s, homeowners were required to light windows facing the streets, with the goal of easing the trade that was the foundation of the economy there. By the 1760s, the City was collecting a levy and setting up the first streetlights, which were big oil lamps. The tax paid for the lamps and the oil to keep them burning all night.
As technology improved and New York grew, streetlamps changed and spread through the neighborhoods. Broadway was completely gas-lit in the late 1820s, and improved versions of gaslights would survive into the 20th century. But electricity was coming. Brush Electric and Power installed the first electric streetlights on Broadway in 1880, and in 1892, big fancy ones were put up on Fifth Avenue.
For most of the City, though, the turn of the 20th century was still gaslight time. Gas streetlights survived in residential areas for decades, and many homes also relied on them. In other parts of the world, gas lights never entirely went away, and some communities ultimately revived gas streetlights as a nostalgic draw. South Orange, New Jersey actually has a gas lamp as its symbol, and cities from Manhattan Beach, California to Prague, Czech Republic have gas lighting in special areas.
Gas light was also big in the theatre. It was the most popular way of lighting houses for a long time, and as in the rest of the world, electricity moved in slowly to replace it. Ella Shane, as an opera singer who tours frequently, would be familiar with both the literal limelight, the glow cast by a particular kind of gas lamp, as well as the figurative one.
Ella and her cousin Tommy also have gas light in their townhouse at Washington Square. There’s a reason people sometimes refer to the late 19th century as the Gaslight Era, and think of it with a nostalgic glow. Gas light had a greenish-white tinge and the flame flickered a bit in ways that modern electric (and certainly LED) lights don’t, so it really did look different.
More romantic? Well, that’s up to you. But there might just be a goodnight kiss in the gaslights in A FATAL FIRST NIGHT…

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WFH LIFE....FOR LIFE!

Work from home life is a 2020 thing for many of us…and often a mixed blessing for women. But in the nineteenth century, they didn’t call it work from home life: they just called it life.
“The Angel in the House,” a rather awful poem by Coventry Patmore, originally published in 1854, neatly encapsulated the ideal: a woman who stayed in the family home taking care of her husband and children without so much as a peep of complaint…or a thought of her own. Among the insights: “Man must be pleased; but him to please is woman’s pleasure.”
Um, yeah. The fact that a guy could not only put that into print without having someone drop a nice cast-iron soup pot on his head, but become famous for it, tells you everything you need to know about the way society looked at women. By the end of the century, it was very clearly the Victorian ideal: a woman who stayed in her family circle and tended to home matters, making it a heaven and a haven for her man.
Middle- and upper-class women, we have to add here. None of this lovely home life was possible without somebody to scrub the pots (cooking and chamber), boil the laundry and keep that big black-iron cookstove going. And that somebody was usually a female lower on the social ladder. Nobody above her was especially worried about whether she got to be an angel in HER house.
By the turn of the 20th century, plenty of women were fighting the idea. In 1891, Charlotte Perkins Gilman described the Angel as being “as dead as the dodo.” And the scathing criticism of the woman who exists only to please her husband and family only ramped up as first-wave feminism caught fire.
That didn’t mean the idea was dead. A good woman was still very much a woman who stayed home. Oh, she was allowed to take the children out for a daily promenade, attend events on the husband’s arm, and serve on the occasional improving committee…but she knew that she really belonged at home, and spent most of her time there – and on duty.
In Ella Shane’s world, the Angel in the House is a big problem. Not just for Ella, a woman who makes her living touring the country and performing – two BIG no-no’s for most respectable females, never mind her trouser role costumes – but for her friend Hetty MacNaughten. As a newspaper reporter, Hetty spends most of her time writing for the “women’s page,” aimed at those house angels.
And just as Ella has yet to find a good solution to what we now call work-life balance, Hetty’s stuck too. Her colleague and friend Yardley Stern hints that he’d like to be more…but he’s also quite up-front about admitting that he wants an angel in his house. Trouble ahead.
Of course, Ella’s singing partner Marie has found the balance, thanks to an understanding husband, and her own willingness to make professional sacrifices. Which, now that you mention it, sounds a lot like what happens today. Several recent studies suggest that women have carried much of the weight of lockdown life, struggling to keep their own work amid home school and more. Mr. Patmore might disagree…but these days we have REAL Angels in the House!

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READ LIKE A DIVA

“You have a gift. Now you must build an accomplished person around it.”
That’s what Ella Shane’s mentor, Madame Lentini, told her, soon after she met the little girl with the huge mezzo-soprano voice. For then ten-year-old Ellen O’Shaughnessy, as for so many other striving people, the place she built that accomplished person was her local lending library.
Libraries have been around since Ancient Egypt, but for centuries, they were associated with religious orders, or the elite. But, starting in the late eighteenth century, and gathering more steam in the nineteenth, bringing books to the masses became an important social goal. Victorians loved the idea of reading for self-improvement; there’s an entire literary genre devoted to young people (usually, but not always, boys) who bettered themselves through education. So there were plenty of groups looking for ways to get books into the hands of people who would benefit most.
By the time Ella was a girl, in the 1870s, there were a fair number of lending libraries in New York City, mostly run by various charities. The City did have a huge public library, the Astor Library, a reasonable walk from her Lower East Side home, but it would not have been especially welcoming to a poor girl, even one with immaculate manners and a genuine opera diva pushing her forward.
Madame took young Ellen to a smaller place, with a somewhat suspicious, but welcoming librarian, who gave the girl a stern lecture on treating her borrowed book well. It wasn’t necessary for her, or many other strivers. To them, being able to walk into the building, choose any book they liked, and take it home to read seemed like a fairy tale, and they would treat the book like the treasure it was.
At that time, and for many years after, the collection would have been very heavy on history and literature. Of course, in the nineteenth century, that meant mostly the lives and works of white European men. Women mostly made it into the narrative as helpmeets or victims. Even so, in the works of Shakespeare, and some of the biographers inspired by England’s Queen Victoria, a girl might find some hints that women were good for more than Angels in the House. Let’s just step past the fact that the only time a woman gets to step into an important role is when there are no men left in the line of succession.
Beyond the literature and history, our striving readers would also find plenty of travelogues and exploration narratives. It was the era of “discovering” new places, and the intrepid (usually) men who had been to the remote wilds naturally wrote about them. For people digging ditches, schlepping deliveries, or scrubbing laundry in their tight little neighborhoods, those books opened up an entirely different kind of world: places that actually existed and that they could aspire to see one day.
Whether it was Shakespeare’s words, an explorer’s vivid description of his discoveries, or the story of a Queen, the lending library offered everyone the knowledge they needed to improve themselves, and eventually their lot. To become, as Madame Lentini insisted – and little Ellen O’Shaughnessy ultimately did – an accomplished person. Not bad for a roomful of books!

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