Ham House Part 2

Ham House, Richmond

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I’ve offered a few views of the North Drawing Room in the previous blog post, but reels give a better sense of the environment. The tapestries show farming activities during the year. Milking in April, Sheep-Shearing and Hay-Making in June & July, Reaping in May and August, Plowing and Sowing in September, and Wine-making in October. Though they were woven between 1699 and 1719, they were not hung in this room until early in the 20th century. According to the guidebook, the tapestries hanging in this room in the 1600s depicted the story of Phaeton, and “Tapestry was then the ultimate form of luxury room decoration.”

The Queen’s Bedchamber gets a reel, too. It stopped being a bedchamber and turned into a drawing room in the 1740s.

The Queen’s Closet did not get that kind of makeover. It’s very much as it was originally. The oval image is on the ceiling. Only the most honored guests would be invited here. I don’t know whose shoes these are—the guidebook is silent, because things get moved around, and this layout is a little different from the guidebook—but I assume they date to the 17th century.

The ebony cabinet stands in the Duke’s Dressing Room. The other two images are of the Duke’s Closet, a much smaller and more private room. The original upholstery and wall hangings were, according to the guidebook, “black and olive damask with a scarlet fringe and silver and black edging.”

People are always curious about cleanliness in past times. While they didn’t bathe according to our standards, our ancestors kept as clean as they could, given their circumstances. They changed their undergarments frequently, because these could be easily laundered. People took daily sponge baths—if they could. Cleanliness did depend on economics. If you’re a pauper, your first concern is staying alive. If, on the other hand, you’re a duchess, you’ve got servants to fill your bathtub and make everything pleasant for you. And certainly, as is the case today, some people simply won’t bother. For instance, the 11th Duke of Norfolk (1746-1815) had an aversion to soap and water. The servants had to wait until he was dead drunk in order to bathe him. One of his wives died in childbirth and the other one went insane. But he had mistresses! They must have had strong stomachs.

The Two Nerdy History Girls Chat Is Now Online. Also, Other Matters.

So there are these long stretches of time when you don’t hear from me . . . and then I inundate you. This ought to be the last one for a while at least.

Our most recent Two Nerdy History Girls chat is now online. You can watch it on YouTube here.

Susan Holloway Scott and I had a wonderful time—again—chatting with Meena Jain and readers about nerdy historical matters. We talked about 18th and 19th century travel quite a bit, and the dangers and discomforts thereof. I also mentioned a couple of nerdy history resources I’ve made frequent use of.

The Epicure’s Almanack: Eating and Drinking in Regency London, ed. Janet Ing Freeman. This is one of the books I might never have found on my own, so I’m grateful to author Candice Hern for calling my attention to it. If you don’t follow Candice on Facebook, you might want to start. She offers all kinds of fascinating historical material, including items from her amazing collection.

Paterson’s Roads (yes, that’s the correct spelling). Though I managed to get my hands on a crumbling 1830s edition, you will find many editions online. You can read an interesting blog post about it here at the Public Domain website.

save the date image with flowers

Detail adapted from a kimono design in Yachigusa by Ueno, Seikō, 1901, Smithsonian Libraries colection

Coming Attractions

Meena Jain has very kindly invited the Two Nerdy History Girls for a return engagement on 17 June at 7pm.

She’s also invited me to join—this time in person—another cast of stellar authors for a RomCon in the spring.

Romancing New England RomCon 2024 - Romance Authors Festival at the Ashland Public Library, Ashland Massachusetts, on Saturday 18 May from 10-4pm

If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll attend. We have fewer opportunities to talk to readers in person these days, and Meena Jain and her team organize an especially enjoyable event.

More official posts will appear as we draw closer to the dates.

P.S. And for all the kind readers who signed up for this blog after the 2NHG chat: Due to deadline and then a flurry of catchup activity, combined with my own technological incompetence, I wasn’t able to update the subscribers list until today. Some of you may want to check out the blog post just before this one, wherein the fate of the third Difficult Dukes book is revealed.

Two Nerdy History Girls on YouTube

Corset maker fitting customer with a corset

La M. de Corsets, ca 1832, anonymous, after Numa, Rijksmuseum.

We talked about cleanliness and chamber pots. We talked about corsets. Yes, we always seem to talk about corsets. We talked about nursing mothers and wet nurses. We talked about getting from one place to another and the state of the roads in England and in 18th century America. We talked about other things.

Our listeners asked questions and helped us out from time to time when our nerdy brains failed to provide a detail. Susan Holloway Scott and I had fun, and the time passed quickly. All went smoothly because we have a terrific host in Meena Jain, Ashland Public Library Director.

Scene on London street of quarreling coachmen and general chaos.

Miseries of London by Thomas Rowlandson

You can watch the proceedings here at the Ashland Public Library’s YouTube channel.

Images: La M.de de Corsets, ca. 1832 : Cést de la vrai (...), anonymous, after Numa, c. 1832. Rijksmuseum.

Miseries of London, Jam of Coaches. Ackermann, Rudolph, 1764-1834 (publisher) Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, (printmaker). Published/Created:[London] : Pubd. Feby. 1st, 1807 by R. Ackeman [sic], No. 101 Strand, [1 February 1807]. Courtesy Lewis Walpole Library