Getting Intimate With History:
The Lessons Everyday Items Teach Us About the Past
"From my earliest boyhood,
ancient wearing apparel, old household and kitchen utensils, and antique
furniture, have appealed to me with peculiar force, telling facts and relating
incidents to me in such a plain, homely but graphic manner of the every-day
life of our ancestors, that I look upon them more as text-books than as
curiosities; for it is only by the light of truth reflected from these objects
that we are enabled to¼pierce the¼fiction with which the perspective of years surrounds the
commonest objects of those remote times."
—Beard, Dan C. "Six Feet of Romance."
The Cosmopolitan. July, 1889.
p. 226.
The
more we use something, the more familiar we become with it. For instance, no one would expect watching
French films once a year to make them fluent in the language, let alone
intimate with the culture, but living in the country is a different
matter. Until someone invents a
functional time machine we can't emigrate to different times to study the
cultures of other eras. However, we can
learn about them through all the everyday artifacts people left behind. Familiarity with the things that shaped
people's world helps us understand them better.
My
husband Gabriel and I live with as many everyday Victorian items (especially
things from the 1880s and '90s) as we possibly can. It's an extraordinarily tangible way to
connect with and learn about a time that fascinates us. The antique objects which fill our days and
nights are our teachers, and they constantly teach us new lessons.
We
started by collecting antique clothes, then gingerly wearing them for short
periods on special occasions, then creating meticulous copies we could wear
every day. Clothing is amazingly
intimate. It shapes the people who wear
it, and they shape it in turn. Some of
our earliest lessons in the depth of this relationship came from Gabriel's
antique suits. We could find garments
that fit him in every single dimension save the chest and shoulders, where the
proportions would be dramatically different.
This baffled us, until we realized Victorians were trained from a very
early age to hold themselves erect, with shoulders back to expand the
chest. They didn't spend hours every day
slumped over driving wheels or in many of the other hunched postures that destroy
so many modern backs. Gabriel began
doing workout routines which tightened his back muscles. He made a conscious effort to hold himself
upright every day, and slowly his proportions shifted until he could wear those
antique suits he admired so much.
(Always very carefully of course, since age had rendered them
delicate.) In my case changing my physiology
was much quicker and easier: it only took a corset.
We
made copies of those original garments so that we could wear them every day
without damaging irreplaceable antiques.
It's important to remember that they weren't always antiques, though
. The damage done and repairs made by
the clothes' original owners tell their stories in very poignant ways. One of Gabriel's antique suits is nearly
immaculate, and one could easily assume it had been worn only once or twice
before it was forever stored away. Looking
down the viewer sees the reason: an enormous tea stain across the front of the
trousers. Another of his antique suits
is made of relatively fine fabric —except for its pockets, which are rough as
sailcloth. The former owner must have
carried heavy items (keys, perhaps?), and knew his own propensity for wearing
through pockets. These sorts of details
are considered flaws by most collectors and dramatically lower antiques'
financial worth. (This is why we can
afford them at all!) However, they increase
their educational value in a way that has nothing to do with money. To us these aren't flaws: they are memories
of people long gone, details too mundane at the time to write in books, but
recorded forever in the items they touched.
When
Gabriel first presented me with a Victorian kerosene heater, the device made me
distinctly nervous. Could such a large
flame possibly be safe? But I remembered
peeps into modern Japanese home life when I'd taught English in the small town
of Komatsu for a year. Kerosene heaters
are still quite common in Japan, and my friends there didn't think twice about
using them when the weather turned cold.
Remembering their nonchalence made me willing to try the Victorian
heater. Now after five years of using
the dependable, utterly safe device, I recognize my old anxieties for what they
were: narrow-minded prejudice against something unfamiliar. Familiarity with the tool gave me confidence
in my ability to use it.
I
bought my eyedropper fountain pen with a portion of my first book advance, and
I came to look on inkstains on my right hand as a mark of pride which proved I
was doing my job as a writer. They also
incline me to think that inkstained hands were a contributing factor in the
popularity of gloves in Victorian wardrobes: an insight I would never have
gained if all of this hadn't become such a part of me.
Every
object humans create says something about its individual makers, and every item
we use bears our fingerprints in one way or another. My husband and I love our antiques for their
beauty and utility, but most of all we love them for their lessons of the
past. They allow us to literally touch
history, and to connect with its most private details.
For more on Sarah please follow her on https://www.facebook.com/ThisVictorianLife and her web site http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/
Thank you very much for your very interesting blog!
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