Some small town museums can come across as very cluttered. They tend to display most of their artifacts, often lovingly donated by locals, instead of doing as larger museums do: keeping the bulk of artifacts stored away for preservation or research purposes and leaving only a handful of carefully curated items on display. These small, often volunteer-run museums can provide fascinating insight into what the local community thinks are important to preserve.
As someone who is interested in material history, I am at times frustrated and at others gleeful in these types of museums. I’m frustrated because I often encounter artifacts that seem like they have an interesting story but are displayed with no context and/or in a way that’s hard for me to see (poor lighting, cluttered cases), so I may walk away feeling thwarted instead of enlightened. I’m gleeful, though, when I encounter a type of object I know something about, particularly ones I’ve only ever read about in books and had never seen in person. I often can’t help myself and start interpreting in my excitement to any hapless other visitors around me.
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Such was the case in the Fred Light Museum in Battleford, Saskatchewan, when I ran into this case of porcelain teacups. I’ve never seen so many moustache cups in one place! In short, moustache cups were popular in the last few decades of the 19th century and can be described as elegant sippy cups for men. The moustaches of the Victorian era were at times large and sometimes carefully coaxed into shape by moustache wax – wax that would melt if it encountered hot liquids like tea. The addition of a porcelain bar or removable metal piece on top of a tea cup would protect the moustache from being damaged while the man drank. #Victorianproblems, am I right?
The late Victorian era saw the rise of the bicycle. They were easy to use, relatively cheap, encouraged physical exercise, and allowed women to do crazy things like get out of the house and go farther afield without necessarily being escorted by men. The early history of the bicycle is entwined with the history of modern feminism, encouraging health, autonomy, and a simplification of cumbersome clothing. As Susan B. Anthony famously said in 1896:
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.”
Of course, with social change, comes people made uncomfortable by that social change. Etiquette manuals had a lot to say about bicycles and how to use them in a refined, well-bred way. Some advice was practical, other recommendations were outright bizarre, and many often translated into limiting a woman’s ability to use the bicycle to its full potential.
A classy Victorian lady and her bicycle. Mabel Williams with bicycle at 54 Main Street, residence of James Ballantyne, July 1898. Image courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
The first thing a cyclist should understand is how to talk about what they’re doing. According to Maud Cooke (“The Well-Known and Popular Author”, as she is described on her title page), in her book Social Etiquette (1896):
“It is distinctly understood in the first place that ‘cycling’ is the correct word; the up-to-date woman dares not speak of bicycling nor of wheeling.”(343)
Chaperones for lady cyclists are important, Cooke says. If you don’t have a chaperone who can ride a bicycle, train one up yourself!
“Neither must a married woman ride alone; failing a male escort, she is followed by a groom or a maid. A woman is very fortunate if among her men or women servants, one knows how to ride a bicycle. Ladies occasionally go to the expense of having a servant trained in the art.”(344)
Cooke also tells her readers to make good use of male relations:
“If one possesses such a commodity as a brother or a husband, he can always be made useful on a cycling excursion. Never is a man better able to show for what purpose he was made than upon such occasions. . . . he must always be on the alert to assist his fair companion in every way in his power – he must be clever enough to repair any slight damage to her machine which may occur en route, he must assist her in mounting and dismounting, pick her up if she has a tumble, and make himself generally useful and incidentally ornamental and agreeable.
He rides at her left in order to give her the more guarded place, as the rule of the road in meeting other cyclers is the same as that for a carriage, to turn to the right. In England, the reverse is the case.”(344)
Look at these gentlemen cyclers, not helping out their lady friends! Norman and Adam Ballantye with bicycles at 54 Main Street. James and Lilly Ballantyne are at left of photo. Image courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
And don’t you dare ring your bell too much.
“Society. . . frowns upon constant ringing of the bell – that will do for the vulgar herd who delight in the noise.”(345)
Cooke’s strangest piece of advice to me is this whole discussion of having women cyclists dragged along behind male cyclists on rubber towropes:
“Very gallant escorts use a towrope when accompanying a lady on a wheeling spin. These are managed in various ways; one consists of an India-rubber door-spring just strong enough to stretch a little with the strain, and about six feet of shade cord. One end is attached to the lady’s wheel at the lamp bracket or brake rod by a spring swivel, and the other end is hooked to the escort’s handle bar in such a way that he can set it free in a moment, if necessary. When he has finished towing he drops back to the lady’s side, hanging the loose end of the cord over her shoulder, to be ready for the next hill. A gentle pull that is a bagatelle to a strong rider is of great assistance to a week one up hill or against a strong wind.”(345-6)
Wait, I tell a lie. Here’s Cooke’s advice for scaring off stray dogs that like to chase you when you ride your bicycle past them:
“For Protection Against Dogs. Every bicyclist in the land will rise up and call the inventor of the ammonia gun for dogs blessed. Nothing is more annoying to the rider than to have a mongrel dog barking at his pedals and scurrying across his pathway in such close proximity to the front wheel as to be a constant reminder of a possible ‘header.’ The gun is calculated to make an annoying dog sneeze and sniff away all future ambitions to investigate the pace of a rider. It is said to be a perfect instrument in every way. The advantages enumerated for it are: Positively will not leak; has no springs to press or caps to remove, and will shoot for five to twelve times from fifteen to thirty feet with one loading.”(346)
Well, I am glad that these guns can be used up to five to twelve times! I am also intrigued by this little bit of cycling slang: apparently tumbling head over heels is called a “header.”
Finally, here is Cooke’s long list of “Don’ts for Cyclers”:
In summary: sit up straight, don’t look ridiculous, still come to church, don’t get in anybody’s way, don’t trust directions from working class folks, dress modestly, and follow the law.
I do note that vintage lady cyclists were charmingly called “bloomers”! If we don’t want to bring back ammonia guns to scare off dogs or rubber towropes to go up hills, we can still bring the classy Victorian cycling looks back into style.
Resources
Maud C. Cooke (The Well-Known and Popular Author). Social Etiquette or Manners and Customs of Polite Society. London, Ontario: McDermid & Logan, 1896.
And just for fun… Kate Beaton’s comic “Step Aside Pops“, parodying a Victorian cartoon on the evils of cycling.
This post is dedicated to Renée and Lauren, who recognized me at the Flying Canoe Festival in Edmonton last month and made me feel momentarily internet famous.
The word “etiquette”, when used in the twenty-first century, seems almost invariably to have a pretentious connotation. They’re those rules that we’re almost inevitably messing up that nobody cares about anymore except when they embarrass us. “Remnants” of “sexist” etiquette, such as the idea that men should hold open doors for women, still cause anxiety today, with some men not wanting to appear rude by allowing the door to slide closed in a woman’s face but also not wanting to seem sexist by holding it open.
However, etiquette, at its root, was never meant to embarrass anyone. The idea was that if everybody followed the same set of rules, then one could go through life knowing precisely what to expect of themselves and others. Awkwardness would be reduced because everyone knew their role in a given social situation. Caveat: this did, of course, enable entrenched gendered, racial, and classed systems by making certain actions as “natural.” That being said, the general idea behind etiquette was to facilitate interactions with various members of society.
Where does one learn these rules? Generally by being brought up “correctly”: being “well-bred” and well-educated as a child. Essentials of etiquette include not drawing attention to the body (which is why, say, cleaning one’s teeth at the dinner table with a toothpick or picking one’s nose have generally been faux-pas for ages), knowing how to address others properly, and being calm and courteous in almost any situation.
Immortalized mid-sneeze. Bodily functions were one aspect of life that people of “good breeding” would always ignore. It was because they would avoid drawing attention to bodily functions that actions such as blowing one’s nose loudly, picking one’s teeth at the table, or farting are considered rude even today. Source: Tumblr.
Written etiquette guides, of course, spoke to the anxieties surrounding these usually unwritten rules. The bulk of these books addressed unusual circumstances like introductions and marriages, particularly in situations where one might have to address strangers. One etiquette book from 1896 actually spends over twenty pages on bicycle etiquette: how long a lady could go out cycling, whether or not it was appropriate for her to cycle unescorted, etc. The amount of ink spilled in this chapter is testament to the anxiety the writer felt about this new situation and how society should react to it.
Quick: what’s the worst possible breach of etiquette, according to Edwardian etiquette manuals? It may surprise you. Getting little details incorrect- e.g., whether or not to hold aloft the cliché pinky while sipping a teacup – may mark you out as ill-bred, but the occasional error will not put you in disgrace. No, the worst breach of etiquette is pointing out someone else’s breach of etiquette. So those folks who like to nit-pick other people’s behaviour and correct them in front of others to feel superior? They are in fact worse offenders than those they mock.
(Aside from parents or governesses teaching children etiquette, the only exceptions to this rule seems to be the authors of etiquette manuals, but they always have arrogant overtones to their writing.)
One etiquette manual asked its readers to consider how one should react in a test situation. Say you are hosting a dinner, and you, the hostess, look over and notice that one of your guests is eating his soup with the wrong utensil: a fork. The worst possible outcome of this situation would be for you to chastise this guest in front of everyone, marking yourself out as ill-bred and embarrassing your guest. Alternatively, it would be almost as bad for that guest to look over at you, the hostess, and see that he was eating with a different utensil and for him to feel embarrassed. So what does this etiquette manual recommend you do? Pick up your fork and eat your soup with it like that guest. (Besides, this situation would not have arisen if everyone knew the correct rules; if the problem was that the guest was not brought up well enough to know the correct utensils when he saw them, he should not have been invited, and if the problem was that his table setting lacked the required utensil, that was your fault as a hostess, not your guests’.)
We in 2014 do not live in an etiquette-less society. Some of our etiquette may in flux, certainly, but one of the reasons that people get annoyed is because many of us do not follow the same set of assumed rules. Take, for example, using one’s phone in a lecture hall. Texting, most of us have been taught, is incredibly rude to do when someone is speaking, doubly so if you are, say, a student in a lecture meant to be receiving information from someone with greater knowledge/power than you. However, in recent years, live-tweeting a conference talk has become more and more common; in that case, the audience member glued to their smart phone is in fact being more attentive to what the speaker is saying, not less. Nevertheless, one still can’t, at a glance, see if the person sitting in the front row staring at their phone (and not the speaker) is texting someone about how drunk they were last night or if they are in fact spreading the speaker’s message to attentive followers who couldn’t make it to the lecture.
Historical etiquette books are fascinating because just as often as they enumerate points of etiquette that seem quaint and old-fashioned (one devoted several pages to the merits of using forks or spoons to eat ice cream), much of their advice is still immediately applicable today. Watch this space for further blog entries on forgotten but still useful pieces of historical etiquette.
A group of women walk up the steps of the Rue de Rivoli, Paris, on June 3rd 1906. Notice the way that they have gathered a handful of their skirts from behind and pulled it forward, freeing the legs to walk up the steps without flashing knees by taking fistfuls of it from the front and raising it up. Source: Edwardian Street Style.
Have you ever had a boss that you absolutely despised? W. Gladstone certainly did. Not to be confused with the nineteenth century British Prime Minister of the same name, Gladstone was a labourer for the Hudson’s Bay Company in his youth during the 1840s and 1850s and decades later wrote a really evocative biographical account of his life during the fur trade era. Here is the amazingly vicious description Gladstone wrote of the death of John Rowand: Chief Factor of the Saskatchewan District and his ultimate boss in Rupert’s Land. One of Rowand’s nicknames was “One Pound One” after his shuffling footstep from a limp he’d acquired after a hunting accident in his youth. He was known for his “tyrannical” attitude and impatience towards the labourers under his command. Historian John MacGregor wrote of an incident described by Father Albert Lacombe, a Catholic Missionary, at Fort Edmonton:
“[Lacombe] sympathized with the overworked boatmen. Never had he seen such travail and his warm heart went out to the voyageurs to the extent that on behalf of one of them who was ill but carrying on, he tried to induce John Rowand to give the man a rest. Rowand was flabbergasted and scolded the priest for being impertinent enough to approach him in such a case. In Rowand’s defense, it may be said that if he had permitted himself to relax the man’s labors, he would soon have been overwhelmed by all his trackers trying to take advantage of a man they considered a weak boss.
‘But the man is ill,’ pleaded the priest, ‘and has been ill for a week.’
‘Bah!’ said the rugged Rowand. ‘He’s all right. Any man who’s not dead after three days’ sickness is not sick at all.'”
(J.G. MacGregor, John Rowand, Czar of the Prairies (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1978), 161-2.)
“A first-class devil”? (According to Gladstone.) The only known photograph of Chief Factor John Rowand, circa 1847. Note the jowls. Image courtesy of the Glenbow Museum and Archive.
The year was 1854…
“Chapter XIV
THE END OF ONE-POUND-ONE
Having ended my first five years with the Hudson’s Bay Company, I commenced my second term as a journeyman boat builder and soon after I signed a contract for two more years, the boats left for York. About three weeks after their departure, a son of One-Pound-One came from Fort Pitt to take charge for the summer at Edmonton. He told us all the particulars of his father’s death.
It seems that when the men arrived at Fort Pitt they got into a general fight and raised a row that reached the old man’s ears. He hastened to the scene of the fight, fuming with rage and frothing at the mouth. He got himself worked up to a great pitch, trying to stop the fight and swore like a madman.
Suddenly he dropped in his tracks and when lifted up was found to be stone dead. When the men who were on the river bank heard the news there was a great rejoicing and all around the country.
His son threatened to kill the man who was the innocent cause of his father’s death, but this man escaped to the woods and with a French half-breed and his wife as guides, fled from pursuit. One night they camped at Vermillion River. The fugitive, whose name was Paul, took his axe to cut timber for a raft and the half-breed with his gun, left the camp to hunt game for supper.
While Paul was engaged in felling a tree he was shot dead by the frenchman who claimed that seeing him dimly through the underbrush, he mistook him for a wild animal and fired. We all believed that the truth of the matter was that Paul had been murdered by the half-breed and that One-Pound-One’s son had bribed him to follow Paul and killed him. The poor fellow was buried where he fell and nothing further was said about the matter.
The chief factor was the only judge and jury then and could do pretty much as he liked even to the extent of making away secretly with an enemy. There was no one besides him to represent the law and no one to insist on justice. One-Pound-One was buried at Fort Pitt. Next spring his body was taken up and an old Cree boiled all the flesh off his bones which were sent to St. Boniface for burial.
The women say that long before the water boiled in the cauldron they heard groans and hisses issuing from it. It did not take much to make the old man hot when he was alive and perhaps even his inflammable carcass resented being boiled in a pot like beef. Women are always a trifle superstitious and I didn’t put much faith in that story.
Perhaps it grew some since, for there was also a yarn about them making a by-product of soap from his remains, so that on wash days, the old man, in the form of soap, became a blessing to the fort. But I don’t believe that story either, for he was too far from godliness when alive, to become an agent of cleanliness after death.
So, good-bye to old One-Pound-One, and I hope he is not in that hot place to which he was always sending us, but if he is Satan must have given him a place among his advisors, for he certainly had all the qualifications to make a first-class devil. His son was a chip off the old block and when we got rid of him too, a year later, there was not one of us who did not bear his grief like a man and if we needed our handkerchiefs, it was to hide our smiles.”
(W. Gladstone, The Gladstone Diary: Travels in the Early West(Lethbridge, Alberta: Historic Trails Society of Alberta, 1985), 40-1.)
[Unprofessional aside: OH SNAP.]
Gladstone’s account is one of the few written sources we have written from the point of view of the labouring class during the fur trade, and as such he represents a unique perspective of what life was like on the ground – and working under intimidating figures like John Rowand. You can really feel the hatred for his boss oozing off of the page, written decades after the events he describes. Rowand is described in animalistic terms – “frothing” at the mouth, for instance. I love the “first-class devil” description. Even when Gladstone was casting doubt on the nasty rumour that Rowand’s considerable fat was used for soap, he made it into an insult; in essence, “there’s no way that could have happened, because cleanliness is next to godliness and there was nothing godly about John Rowand.” Of course, as he was not present, much of what he evocatively describes of the incident is malicious rumour, but we do know that Rowand’s body was disinterred from its burial spot at Fort Pitt, rendered to the bones, and sent to Montreal in a barrel. Rowand was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery over four years after his initial death.
The story of the death of John Rowand (or “The Tale of the Pickled Factor,” as one of my friends and former colleagues describes it) remains a popular narrative at Fort Edmonton Park. I am currently finishing a term paper on interpretive techniques and myth making at historic sites using this story as a case study. Keep an eye out for video and audio recordings of a fuller version of this tale on this blog in the future.
Further Reading and Related Posts
This large quotation was an excerpt from a reprint of Gladstone’s journals found here: Gladstone, W. The Gladstone Diary: Travels in the Early West. Lethbridge, Alberta: Historic Trails Society of Alberta, 1985.
MacGregor, J. G. John Rowand, Czar of the Prairies. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1978.
Silversides, Brock. Fort de Prairies: The Story of Fort Edmonton. Victoria; Calgary; Vancouver: Heritage House Publishing Ltd. Co., 2005.
Just for fun, check out this recent song by Cadence Weapon: “One Pound One (Hudson’s Bay) is a timpani-based club anthem based on the legend of John Rowand, a chief trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company and proprietor of Fort Edmonton.”
Dominion Day Bunting: I love the word “bunting”. I find it a cheerful piece of vocabulary, although I also associate it the action of booting/kicking for some reason. These are also the colours of the British/Imperial flag, not a celebration of France or the United States, though some visitors do get confused. God save the Queen!
“A tourist’s confusion. While I was taking this picture one of the other visitors made the comment about how the bunting (Not a permanent fixture, just a Dominion Day decoration) must be an homage to the French contingent of Canada’s history. I’m fairly certain that it’s just the colours of the Union Jack and not the French flag though, especially in a province that was named after a member of the British Royalty. Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, daughter of Queen Victoria who at the time was the ‘Queen of Canada’.”
“One of the great plagues of travel is the preposterous quantity of luggage which women, as a rule, insist upon taking with them. They pack up for the trip everything that they think is likely to prove useful; and as they will never admit that they possess one useless thing in their wardrobe, the only articles left behind are those which ultimately are either sold to the dealer or sent as Christmas presents to poor relations. Now, it is not at all necessary to take with you your whole wardrobe to persuade people that you are a respectable person. People on the Continent who travel much care little about who or what you are, so long as you are not dressed in an outrageously vulgar style. If you appear plainly attired, so that no one thinks of observing your costume, you will be thought a sensible girl or woman, who, if she has never been abroad before, has something of a traveller’s instinct. If, on the contrary, you are perpetually changing your dress, appearing in new colours every day, and endeavouring to attract attention, you will be regarded as a vulgar woman, who has seen nothing of the world, whom it is desirable to avoid, or as the walking advertisement of some second-rate London dressmaker.”
Complete Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen: A Guide to the Rules and Observances of Good Society. London: Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd, 1900. Chapter XVII: Foreign Travel, pg. 87-8.
I am constantly fascinated by historical etiquette, particularly etiquette books. Some of them, like the one above, can drift into snarky territory, but they can really reveal much about the “ideals” of “polite society”/”good breeding” as much as they tell us, through their anxieties and condemnations, about class tensions, social interactions, and the everyday annoyances of life.
I am currently reading through multiple etiquette books from about 1896-1915 in search of etiquette for travellers, as I am thinking of framing a term paper on tourism, society and trans-Atlantic crossings in etiquette advice.
Some of the advice they give is still incredibly practical. I will have to post excerpts from Maud C. Cooke’s Social Etiquette Or Manners and Customs of Polite Society (1896). Her advice on fashion, particularly what is flattering with different hair colours, complexions and body types, is still incredibly relevant. Her advice on bicycle etiquette (which she seems to be quite anxious about and spends quite a bit of time discussing) also deserves its own blog post. Or personalized Twitter feed.
Two or three years ago, while doing research on Civil War medicine at the University of Alberta, I ran across an interesting reference to a particular female doctor who served during the conflict on the Union side. Her name? Dr. Mary Walker.
You might notice something intriguing about what she’s wearing. Namely, it doesn’t look anything like this or this, two examples of higher-class women’s fashion from the decade of the 1860s: the largest hoop skirts that would be tolerated (which evolved into bustles in the following decades) covered by more petticoats (it wouldn’t do to have the line of the hoops show), covered, finally, by the actual dress.
That was a lot of fabric, none of which is evident in the above photograph. In fact, if you didn’t know any better, it looks like she’s wearing… men’s trousers underneath that short skirt. And you’d be right.
Dr. Walker believed that tight corsets along with voluminous skirts and petticoats were unsanitary and hampered her medical practice. So she didn’t wear them: first sporting bloomers, then, midway through the war, abandoning those for a male surgeon’s uniform. She didn’t attempt to pass as a man; she was an obviously female doctor wearing a male uniform.
“They said she was too lazy to wash her clothes,” wrote one biographer, “that she wanted to display her legs, that she was seeking publicity…”
(cited in Leonard’s Yankee Women, 109)
When she was captured by Confederate scouts in April, 1864:
“Dressed in trousers and a surgeon’s uniform, the twenty-five-year-old made such a sensation when she rode into camp [at Richmond’s Castle Thunder] that several Confederate soldiers and visiting wives mentioned the incident in their letters and diaries.”
(Schultz, Women at the Front, 177)
She continued to wear men’s clothing throughout her long life (she lived until 1919) and continually advocated for rational dress reform for women. Here, she is pictured in a man’s top hat in her old age, circa 1911.
Dr. Walker was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for her contributions during the war – she was, after all, captured by the enemy – but when the American government changed its regulations decades later, they tried to revoke her medal, as she was a medical officer who had never seen combat. She refused to return it, and to make a point wore it all the time. (Honestly, just don’t award any new medals to people who don’t meet the right qualifications: don’t try to take ones that have been already awarded to awesome folks who have already proven their stubbornness!)
Here she is, pictured near the end of her life, wearing the infamous medal. Again, see how much women’s fashion has changed over the years, and how dapper and comfortable Dr. Walker looks in her old age.
One more photograph before I leave you:
For more information on Dr. Mary Walker and other awesome Civil War ladies, check out the following:
Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.
Schultz, Jane E. Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
History Research Shenanigans 