Privacy and Proximity

On June 23, 2016June 22, 2016 By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, personal3 Comments

It has been a long time since I read Bowling Alone, and longer still since I read A Pattern Language or Jane Jacobs, but all of those came to mind this past weekend.

I don’t mythologize or romanticize the villages of the past: we all know how The Crucible turns out, but I thought about privacy and proximity, and I thought about scale. Let’s take privacy first.

In this century, it’s difficult to experience the past as anything more than a series of simulacra which we piece together in a crazy quilt of understanding, but past notions of privacy are far different from our own.

Bedroom

Early one morning, as I lay in a creaking rope bed, I considered how unfamiliar most of us are with the noises of other humans. The wall of our bedroom just barely fit against the exterior wall, and moonlight on whitewash showed the spaces between planking and the plaster, and we slept with the bedroom door open to take best advantage of the cool evening cross breeze.

As I lay awake, my companion happily asleep, I pondered the true extent of my laziness. How much clothing did I really need to wear to go up to the public facility? How loud would relieving myself in the chamber pot be? And what would the reaction be? (I have been on the side of someone else’s choice not to use a chamber pot, and said, “I wouldn’t care,” but one never knows.) And though I elected to put on more than my shift and walk to the public convenience, I began to wonder: what did the people in the past tolerate, ignore, or politely decline to mention?

What did living together feel like, when people shared smaller spaces? When the boundary between private and public, bedroom and parlor, was pierced with holes?

Weekend in the Country

On June 22, 2016 By kittycalashIn Events, Living History, Reenacting3 Comments

When I climbed the stairs to Hosmer’s Tavern for Sunday dinner, the kind ladies at the front door told me, “Your family’s in the back room.” This directive gave me pause, for while I am one to argue that we each define our families for ourselves, I did not believe the young woman necessarily understood my theorizing on the dangers of calling people “families” when you don’t know their genealogy. Then I saw this image, taken at Jones House the evening before by the lovely Mrs LC, and realized that the young lady on the porch may have seen something I am too vain to admit.

Still, we were a fairly lively party that gathered in the shade before Foster-Tufts House to take in the scene and exercise our sketching powers. My favorite milliner was stationed inside the house, and I was delighted to acquire a new straw bonnet that wants only trimming before I wear it– probably as soon as August.

Mr S had the most meta experience of all of us, for as I photographed him, an artist was painting him drawing. We could not have had a better living history through literary theory weekend if we had tried. Mr B worked with the camera lucida, something that is beyond my abilities. (It is an unintentionally meta image of Mrs B photographing Mr B while I captured both of them: my junior year art history professor would be dismayed.)

Representing leisure is something I haven’t done before. My idea of living history fun is to work, and as one of my friends says, [My] idea of fun is harder than most people’s work these days. We had some work to do in preparing breakfasts and suppers, and in cleaning up, and as I shopped in the weeks before the trip, I saw the absurdity of packing up food and dishes to prepare a dinner party 400 miles away. You can’t let a trifle like absurdity stop you, or most of us would cease to function, so I packed the Largest Platter in Existence and carried on.

My Grandfather’s Trunk

On June 11, 2016 By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting2 Comments

Some objects you can't shake. And then you buy them. — Some objects you can’t shake. So you buy them.

When I was little, one of the games my mother and I played was “I packed my grandfather’s trunk.” You start with that line, and take turns adding an item in alphabetical order. The trick is, you have to repeat the whole string as you go along, so that by the time you’re packing a zebra, a zither, or zwieback, you’ve got to remember the other 25 things you and your companions have packed. It’s a good game for waiting rooms when you can’t run around, and fun for people who love words. How many nouns that start with “y” can you think of?

After lining the bottom with paper, I packed the linens.

In less than a week, I’ll be packing someone else’s great^x-grandfather’s trunk for a trip westward into the (relative) wilds of New York State to join a Sketching Party. Despite two intense weeks, I’ve persevered on the orange check gown and made significant progress on the Thriller Spencer and finished the second sheet. This is a trip to a different class altogether, one of my two annual forays into the mercantile class of the early Federal period.

It’s quite the thing, packing your alter ego’s equipage for another century, and as I’ve enjoyed a longer commute recently, I’ve pondered the ways in which we stereotype certain kinds of living history practitioners. Progressives don’t always travel light: they travel right, and in this case, it means a quantity of baggage to create the proper simulacrum of an 1814 excursion.

While I decry the use of film and television as sources for historical costuming, I do appreciate them for inspiration, and it is remarkably easy to get someone else hooked on a good adaptation like the BBC’s 2009 Emma. The depiction of the picnic on Box Hill is particularly good (i.e. excruciating) and the pile of materials required for appropriate comfort is overwhelming to anyone who prefers to travel lightly. Never before have I considered a turkey carpet a possible accessory to an excursion, but when one intends to ape one’s betters and bring culture to the frontier, anything is possible.

Civil War and Uncivilized War

On June 7, 2016June 6, 2016 By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting, Research1 Comment

The Hunting Party- New Jersey. oil on canvas ca 1750. MMA 1979.299

Slightly turbulent and busy days chez Calash have resulted in a lack of postings, but work proceeds: Genesee and then New Jersey lie ahead, with some extra-interesting interpretation at Monmouth in late June. For a time, I despaired of figuring out what to do to occupy the time and interpret what was essentially a civil war in Monmouth County. The Craig House, while interesting, is no longer a working farm, so we couldn’t farm a not-farm. Then there’s the tedious issue of the not-home not-farming Craigs: on the day of the battle, John Craig is with the Continental Army and Ann Craig has taken off with wagons of chattel, two slaves, and her child. This began to seem a lot like interpreting the John Brown House without John Brown: they are more present by their absence.

Full Sail off Sandy Hook- Entrance to New York Harbor. watercolor and gouache by Pavel Petrovich Svinin, MMA 42.95.2

What to do? Read more, of course, and talk and talk and talk with Drunk Tailor, who discovered the Association for Retaliation (yes, exactly what it sounds like: vigilanteism) and the Pine Robbers. Much satisfaction there, and finally I listened when he said, “Why can’t we all be refugees?”

Sometimes, you just have to give in to reality. The “London trade” flourished between New York and New Jersey, Sandy Hook providing ready access to the city and Staten Island, where so many Loyalists fled the radical Whigs of New Jersey. Male slaves ran away to join the British army, and the most fearsome and feared in New Jersey was Colonel Tye. The Retaliators promised “a man for a man” for every depredation Whigs suffered, while a similarly-chartered Loyalist association promised the same in return. Chaos reigned and people of all kinds fled the civil war and the uncivilized war. It promises to be an interesting weekend.