Stephanie Abbott's Blog, page 26
January 25, 2012
Conspiracies and Cabals in Victorian Britain
Everyone who knows anything about English cabals and secret societies knows the Order ceased to exist in October 1870. But most think of the Order along the same lines as the Hellfire Club — old men groping saucy tarts in a gaslit, damask-upholstered setting, thick with cigar smoke. Others envision a league of extraordinary gentlemen — and a lady or two — who sought to improve mankind's lot by popularizing new inventions, like the auto-mobile, eliminating dependence on the horse, and the telephone, a means of speaking to anyone, anywhere.
But the truth is the Order was both of those things and much, much more.
The Order was, first and foremost, a group of about three hundred master telepaths and another two hundred lesser telepaths — class two or below, per the Order's internal ranking. It went as follows:
Class One:Telepaths capable of receiving thoughts.
Class Two:Telepaths capable of receiving and sending thoughts.
Class Three: Telepaths capable of receiving and sending thoughts, creating illusions in susceptible individuals, and throwing psi-bolts [jolts of pure mental energy].
Class Four: Telepaths capable of receiving/sending thoughts from great distances, creating detailed illusions, and throwing two or more psi-bolts at once.
The Order's Council consisted entirely of Class Threes and Fours. The Council first convened sometime around 1733, after the Order adopted its official new motto: – "With full right." Despite the dominant tenor of that motto, the Order had learned its lesson from the days of Malegant and Brigid. Psis — beings who manifested the Pinnacle talent, telepathy, or one of its subordinates, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, or healing — were wildly outnumbered by normal humans. And one normal, unexceptional such person, Queen Elizabeth I, had joined forces with a rogue telepath, Brigid, to destroy Malegant and centuries of psi-rule. The sorcerers of the Dark Ages had been unmasked as mere enhanced humans; the superstitious awe for each lich's tower replaced with reverence toward St. Brigid, who had freed the Britons from their enslavement. What followed was the Renaissance — a flowering of humanity. Or, should we say, normal humanity. The psis who survived St. Brigid's purge took notice.
The Order was determined to never again make the mistake of setting themselves up as rulers, and therefore targets. If the official new motto was "With full right," the unofficial motto was "Castellan, never king." You can even trace this in the surnames that emerged during the time, carrying through to the Victorian era. The Order's last Chairman was Nathan Castellan Chamberlain. Both surnames suggest an adjunct to power rather than power itself.
But Nathan Chamberlain ultimately presided over the end of the Order. Was he too weak? Too accommodating? Or did he overreach and meet his own St. Brigid?
January 23, 2012
Health and Medical Beliefs in the Victorian Era
Cold air and foul smells caused illness. Or so most believed. This was the "miasma" theory. Because disease was carried by bad smells, surgeons felt free to operate while wearing the same coat, growing ever more stiff with blood and body fluids, for years. Joseph Lister, inventor of aseptic technique (the notion surgeons should wash their hands, don gloves, and avoid cross contamination while poking about in peoples' innards) once famously rebuked a physician who, after each surgery, wiped his scalpel on the bottom on his boot before going on to the next patient. I doubt the offending doctor listened. Many of Lister's fellow physicians considered him a neat freak, a scold, and a bit of hysteric. But he still got "Listerine" named after him.
Got health problems? Tansy pills are the answer to everything!
That Victorian character described as having a "squint" or a "cast to the eye"? Nowadays, we'd call he or she cross-eyed. In the 1800s, there was no surgical intervention possible, so society was far more accepting of those with an eye that turned in toward the nose or drifted out toward the wall. It wasn't even a detriment to romance. Once I read a novel which mentioned a pretty blonde girl "with a cast to her eye" dancing with all the eligible young men. Misaligned eyes, like cataracts or sudden blindness (probably from glaucoma or retinal detachment) were just part of life.
The leading cause of death in the nineteenth century was … Tuberculosis. A female between the ages of 15 and 35 had a 50% chance of dying of consumption. (Just like Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!) But around mid-century, Victorians won a huge victory against another scourge, smallpox. In an astonishingly inclusive move, Parliament soon acted to make vaccination free. But human nature being what it is, they eventually had to make not getting vaccinated against the law.
Victorian novels, personal diaries, and letters are filled with complaints of headaches. Some believe those headaches came from all the ARSENIC. Even a gracious home was filled with it — in the carpet, the wallpaper, and the upholstery, not to mention books, paint, cosmetics, and toys. Makes you wonder if two hundred years from now, folks will marvel how we managed to live so long while consuming high fructose corn syrup and walking around with mobile phones pressed to our skulls.
Opium was readily available, legal, and stamped with the British Imperial seal. Which was probably good, considering whatever ailed you wasn't likely to be cured, only endured. The Victorian Era had an interesting libertarian slant. People felt free to lecture you about vices — tobacco, prostitutes, gin, and the hookah. But all were still legal.
A fallen woman
The uterus made females acutely prone to melancholia, mania, and of course — hysteria. "Female hysteria" was a catch-all phrase for almost anything, including sadness, defiance, angry outbursts and disobedience. Eventually some doctor decided the appropriate treatment was — wait for it — south-of-the-border massage. The only problem? Many docs felt the process was extremely time-consuming, not to mention tedious, bringing their patients to that climatic finale. (Is it any wonder some of these ladies kept behaving badly and returning to their physicians for treatment?) By 1870, someone finally invented a vibrating machine, sold only to doctors, to satisfy the female hysterics more quickly and increase patient turnover.
Men never showed weakness. Which probably subtracted as many years off their lives as anemia and overwork combined. The rules for a man were mostly emotional. He could be bright but not smart. He could be neat but not foppish. He couldn't show too much interest in his children (effeminate) or expect his wife to welcome his attentions in the bedroom. He could never show fear or shed tears, even when injured. And a man who disgraced himself through bad investments or public humiliation had only one recourse: to shoot himself. Remember during the stock market crash of 1929, all those ruined Wall Street executives — mostly middle-aged men — tossing themselves out of windows? They were the sons of Victorians. In general, I hope the idea that financial ruin necessitates suicide died with them. Though I wouldn't have minded if Bernie Madoff had decided to carry on the tradition.
And in the early part of the era, a few men still dueled illegally
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January 22, 2012
Today Something Different is featured …
On Writer's Block Party. Check it out here:
http://writersparty.com/2012/01/21/book-feature-something-different-by-s-a-reid/
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A Few Universal Victorian Truths That Aren't Actually True
Sometimes people were buried alive. Not that anyone can discern, but there were rare cases of people who'd been declared dead reviving a few hours later. Eventually the urban legend arose that folks were routinely pronounced dead, sealed in their coffin, and left to scream and scratch at the lid until they gave up the ghost for real. This led to all sorts of anti-buried-alive devices, like a wire on the (presumably) deceased person's finger that led to a bell above ground, so they could ring for rescue. Many such devices were sold — it was a public obsession for awhile — but none were ever used.
Skeleton Key
The women saved themselves for marriage. Of course, we're talking middle and upper class women. The lower classes did as they pleased, or as circumstances demanded. But the idea that Victorian women all went to their wedding nights as virgins, like a 1970s Barbara Cartland romance, has been statistically disproved. According to public record, the average firstborn arrived 7 months after the wedding. Reminds me of the old proverb: Babies usually take nine months, but the first one can come anytime.
Marriage was forever. Only if you were female. It was virtually impossible for a woman to obtain a divorce. Simply proving her husband cheated on her wasn't nearly enough; she had to prove he also beat her excessively (ponder that) or was cruel in some other way. If she succeeded in her petition, she would lose not only all social standing but also access to her children, who always went to the father. But men could and did obtain divorces when their wives stepped out of line. In general, however, many married couples did one of two things: (1) the man kept a mistress and the wife kept to herself or (2) they lived apart for the rest of their lives. Sometimes in different houses. Sometimes on different continents.
A real-life portait
Females deformed themselves with corsets. In a few cases, they surely did. (There are famous photographs.) But in general, the terror of "tight lacing," of unnatural wasp waists, of ribs and organs dislocated in the pursuit of perfection, was another urban legend. More like an urban fetish, actually. Pamphlets were written about it, describing the "natural" female form and then its "perversion" quite breathlessly. The Victorians may have been hypocrites about sex, but they never missed a trick when it came to finding a new way to get off.
It was a simpler, more innocent time. Review the following and decide for yourself. Children over the age of eight were expected to work full-time unless their family (usually middle or upper class) kept them in school. And work was necessary, since there was no such thing as Juvvie — a child could be hung for stealing, say, food if the judge deemed him or her "incorrigible." Certain services we take for granted, like the fire department, existed by subscription only. In other words, if your house caught fire and you weren't paid up, the brigade wouldn't scramble and your house would burn down. (But they would arrive on the scene and watch if you lived close to neighbors who were paid up, so they could spring into action for the subscriber.) And if you were unlucky enough to be born with a disability, you were destined to be a beggar, even if your parents were middle or upper class. Why? Because they would send you away the moment your disability was known. A "baby farmer" or some other lower class family would take your imperfect child and raise them up to be a beggar, or else lock them in a room or even hang them (by a harness) on a wall to keep them out of trouble. Jane Austen (not a Victorian, I know, but the practice continued beyond the Regency) had a sibling who was mentally challenged and lived apart from the Austens all his life, too imperfect to be associated with them.
Gustav Dore's Victorian Beggar
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Filed under: facts. victorian, Past Lives Series, Stephanie Abbott, victorian Tagged: London, Past Lives Series, Steampunk, Victorian era
January 21, 2012
Some Fun Facts about Victorian England
Now that Past Lives #1: Rachel is finally out, I'm revisiting some older posts from my Blogspot days.
Pollution: Most homes burned coal in their fireplaces, not wood. And in the grander houses, virtually every room had a fireplace. This is why London fog was usually yellow. And sometimes it was so thick, a lady could arrive home after a day of shopping to find her dress "grayed" by a fine layer of coal dust. Therefore the average man wore black, day in and day out. Inside even the finest homes, the wallpaper had to be washed at least once a year (after a long winter of burning fires daily, spring cleaning was essential). The ceiling plaster was frequently black.
Bathrooms: By the 1870s, most fine houses had indoor toilets, or "water closets." Because the most common version was designed by a man named Thomas J. Crapper, toilets and what went in them got a new name. Tub baths, however, were still a luxury. By the time the maid schlepped enough hot water upstairs to fill the tub, it was already going cold, and virtually everyone believed exposure to cold could make you sick, if not literally kill you. So sponge-bathing and perfume often ruled the day.
Hair: Blonde was considered the ideal color; lady's magazines of the time declared blondes were the only true beauties. Red hair was the worst. As someone famously said, referring to a lady as "red-haired" was tantamount to social assassination. A woman with short hair was shocking; a man with long hair, eccentric. By mid-century, going clean-shaven was out of style, so every man wore a beard, or at least "side-whiskers." (Think Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.)
Vermin: Most people won't be surprised to hear rats were a big problem in middle and lower class homes. But they were just as common in upper class houses. Sometimes when nursemaids heard the baby crying, they found it bleeding from fresh rat bites.
Coming Out: The phrase meant something different back then. Girls too young for courtship were referred to as "in the schoolroom"; to "come out to society" meant to enter the marriage market. Often these girls were presented to the Queen at St. James — the Victorian equivalent of a Senior Prom spotlight dance. The girls had to make the most of their first season. After two or three "failed seasons" — no engagement — they could be considered an old maid. By the mid-Victorian era, there were approximately 10 single women for every single man (statistics vary, but it was definitely lopsided due to disease, crime, and especially war) so the risk of being left an old maid was quite real.
Professional Mourners: The upper classes wanted everything to look just so. Therefore, a good undertaker offered premium services, including the rental of attractive blonde "mutes" whose only function was to stand prominently by the graveside looking inconsolable. After the service, the female mourners could purchase "tear bottles" to store their tears in and keep as a reminder of the deceased.
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Filed under: facts. victorian, Past Lives Series, Stephanie Abbott, victorian
January 18, 2012
January 15, 2012
January 14, 2012
Free on Amazon this weekend!
http://www.amazon.com/Past-Lives-Rachel-ebook/dp/B006VOKP7W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326586316&sr=8-1
How many times can you die for love?
A near-fatal car crash unlocks memories from Rachel MacReady's past life, dredging up secrets taken to the grave. And even as Rachel discovers the hidden power that is her birthright, she finds herself drawn to the reincarnates of two very different men. In that past life, both loved her. One might even have loved her to death…
(First of a 6 book series.)
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January 13, 2012
Check out my guest post…
… for the Something Different blog tour over on Super Single Mom and Her Side Kids.
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January 12, 2012
Today I'm Featured on Kathryn R. Blake's Blog…
… to discuss Something Different with my guest post, Confessions of a Self-Published Author. Check it out!
http://www.kathrynrblake.com/naughtyblog.php?s=post-by-stephanie-abbott-aka-sa-reid
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