Where Queen Elizabeth Slept and What the Butler Saw: A Treasury of Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present

by David N. Durant

Who was a tweenie? How did an ice house work and where would you find a crinkum-crankum wall? What was a chesterfield for, or a Claude glass, and how did a clock jack improve your dinner? The answers to these and many other questions appear in this dictionary, which is a feast of information and trivia for history buffs everywhere wanting to know more than just dates and dry facts. They want to know how people lived: what they ate, how they spoke, how they dressed, what games they played, what their homes looked like. This unique dictionary reveals the fascinating details of life, allowing the reader to travel back in time and experience a typical day in any century from the sixteenth to our own. A book to give hours of pleasure whether browsed through or used for reference-it contains a wealth of unexpected information.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Michael Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I spent a long career as a reference librarian in a very large public library system, and what most civilians would regard as “trivia” is all part of the day’s work to the folks behind the reference desk. Books like this can be very useful in adding to one’s storehouse of miscellaneous knowledge, but they tend to be rather uneven. Subtitled “A Treasury of Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present,” the present volume simply represents a gathering-up of whatever the author knew or could find out. Of course, lacking an index, and sometimes being prey to peculiar alphabetization, a book like this is best consumed by browsing -- and in that regard, it’s a great time-sink. There are many useful entries, such as those for Fleet Prison, Game Laws, Birth Control, Picture hanging, Presentation at Court, and all the variety of pre-Dissolution religious orders, just as a sampling. There are also a number of detailed entries for liturgical vestments and for types of household furniture not much seen these days. Interesting random terms whose origins (and even meanings) are often not understood by modern readers include Burking, Mews, Masques, Riot Act, Coroner, and the Oxford Movement.

Because Durant is an expert in British architectural history, however, there are an inordinate number of listings for architects and designers, most of whom the reader will never have heard of (except for Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, and Capability Brown, probably), and won’t really care. Similarly, there are far too many entries for such specialized design and decoration terms as “grisaille,” “pietra dura,” “Ormolu,” and “Biedermeier.” And the article on “Brickwork” runs for a page and a half. Coverage could have been more rationally thought-out. Why, for instance, have a separate entry for “between-maids” (known as “tweenies”), but not for all the varieties of maids to be found in a large household? Butlers, housekeepers, and footmen have their own entries but everyone else is lumped together under “Servants” and “Outdoor Servants.” (The last two should have been combined, by the way, for convenience in finding them.) Beau Brummell gets his own article but his illustrious and less-known predecessor, Beau Nash, is only mentioned in the article on Bath. And there are brief entries for cricket, croquet, and polo, but not for rugby football -- an equally British institution. Why entries for general (non-historical, non-British) terms like “ghosts”? And why confine huge concepts like “Feudalism” to entries which are so brief they cannot help but be misleading? The same can be said for the page on “Crusades,” which considerably predates the 16th century.

There are numerous quotations and anecdotes sprinkled through the entries, many of them interesting and amusing. But why quote frequently from Samuel Pepys without according him his own entry? As regards the necessary reference apparatus, cross-references are indicated by SMALL CAPS, but their use would have benefited from a copyeditor’s attention; many references within an article to other topics appear in regular type. On the other hand, the word “luncheon” is small-capped in the article on “Gong, dressing” but there’s no entry for it. (You’ll find it under “Meals, times of eating.”)

There’s a very brief bibliography -- but if the author thought one were needed at all, he included some very odd titles and omitted most of the more obvious ones. Finally, even though it would have considerably enlarged the book and increased its cost, it would have been nice to have illustrations for such visual and technical topics as all the species of carriages and lesser wheeled transport.

[Nick Tramdack · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book after seeing it in the "recommended reading" section of GURPS: Steampunk, a role-playing game supplement. I expected to mine it for all sorts of interesting details to jam into my fiction, but to my dismay, I just didn't find it that interesting. Maybe it's valuable as a reference book, but I had trouble going through it cover-to-cover.

However, there were some diamonds, like this entry for "Theatricals":

"The 5th Marquis of Anglesey had the distinction of being the only peer to have bankrupted himself by over-indulgence in amateur theatricals, fancy-dress and jewelry: he built a theatre in the chapel of his house, Plas Newyd, Anglesey, and financed his own company of players, with whom he unfailingly performed his Butterfly Dance whatever the production. In debt to the tune of 250,000 pounds in 1904, he died in Monte Carlo the following year, aged only 30."

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big fun and great info on Elizabethan England! It was very helpful professionally.