Vanessa Riley’s Regency Reflections

Kristi here. Thanksgiving is not a traditional holiday in England, but being thankful for a bountiful harvest is hardly a new concept.

From medieval days, harvesters celebrated Lammas Day on August 1 where they brought loaves of bread made from the first harvested wheat were brought to the church. This was called the Loaf Mass, though some writings indicate that prior to offering loaves, parishioners offered lambs, making it a lamb mass and giving it the name.

When Henry VIII broke from the Catholic church, the celebration shifted to the end of the harvest, marking the successful completion of the gathering.

Some aspects of the harvest festivals include the tradition of the corn dolly, a large feast, and a sort of mini-parade with the horse pulling the final load of crops being decorated with garlands and flowers.

Harvest festivals were frequently held at the time of the Harvest moon. Occasionally this put the festival in October, but more frequently it landed in September, in close proximity to the mop fairs.

Churches were no longer a large part of the festival in Regency days, though by 1850 they were once more integral to the celebration. The connection with the church continues today, though it frequently includes a focus on those less fortunate and suffering from hunger and famine.

Whether you are feasting with family today or just grabbing a ham and turkey sandwich on your way home from work, take the time to be thankful.

Have a wonderful day.

Originally posted 2013-11-28 10:00:00.

I am all a twitter, (not the recently IPO’d kind) but excited about planning a baby shower for a dear friend. As I become steeped in color choices and decorations, the need to play games or not to play games, I begin to think about childbirth or the expectation of childbirth during the Regency.

Sadly, I couldn’t find any corollaries to anything we know today as a baby shower. No cards, or nappy cakes, no diaper genies unless you count the wealthy woman’s servants.

No one seemed to plan any kind of celebration for the expectant mother. What we now call baby showers have their roots in Victorian times.

Why No Regency Celebration?

Let’s face facts. It might be a little hard to plan a tea or invite friends and family over to celebrate an event that had a 20% or greater chance of killing you. Poor hygiene, lack of knowledge of difficult pregnancies, unsanitary practitioners, bloodletting, the discouragement of using midwives (ladies versed in how save women, turn babies coming breach) etc. all played a role in the not so great outcomes for pregnant women during the Regency.

Moreover, the pressure to have a male child could be daunting. Knowing the dire need to produce an heir to protect your husband’s entailed property (and your future comfort upon the death of said husband ) had to decrease the need for pre-birth celebrations.

Though Aristotle (384BC to 322BC) tried to clear things up with his theory of men determining the child’s sex, it was still easier to blame the woman for the child-rearing failings. Good thing science cleared that matter up. Just in case you are new to the world of scientific discovery, the male’s X (female) or Y (male) chromosome determines the sex.

Yet, I did find celebrations or at least acknowledgements of surviving childbirth. People would gather and offer support. They brought food to the mother. During the Renaissance and still practiced during the Regency, visitors (the gossips -Middle Ages term for women and family who gather during the birth) gave painted trays with words of encouragement for the women. Some trays were so pretty, they were hung along the walls to surround the mother during her confinement . With confinement potentially lasting up to 40 days, seeing these kind words and beautiful images had to lift the new mother’s spirits.

As baby shower details are finalized, I will be looking to add a few Regency touches. I’m sure my friend will enjoy these little sentiments to make her prenatal and postnatal time encouraging.

What are some encouraging words or gifts that you would offer to a first time mother?

Originally posted 2013-11-18 10:00:00.

In a given week it’s not unheard of for me to put 300 miles on my minivan. That’s a lot for a stay at home mom that lives in a suburban area. Somehow over the years my life ended up that spread out.

My family drives 25 miles each way to get to church. My daughter has to go to a special type of eye doctor. The closest one is 44 miles away. My other daughter sees a different type of specialist three times a year. That one is 37 miles in the opposite direction.

Seriously, I spend a lot of time in my car. Sadly it looks like I live in it, but that’s beside the point. One of the things I frequently find myself thanking God for is a vehicle that makes this constant driving possible. Yes it is unpleasant to drive for two and a half hours round trip for a simple trip to the doctor, but the fact that I can get to a specialist that far away is incredible.

For our Regency friends the thought of traveling so far would have been a daunting task. It’s a common debate among Regency authors: how far people could travel in a day and how long it took them to do so.

45 miles in an hour and a half is never considered. Our heroines are still 100 years away from Henry Ford’s assembly line constructed Model T. The groundwork for the automobile was already underway, though.

Self-propelled vehicles actually existed for 40 years before Prinny was installed as Prince Regent. They weren’t very impressive and would have moved considerably slower than the ubiquitous horse and carriage, but they existed. They were used to haul heavy artillery across the French countryside.

In 1801, Richard Trevithick drove the first people carrying, self-propelled conveyance on England’s roads. The short Christmas Eve journey was a fun novelty, but he never managed to perfect the road-going vehicle. The Puffing Devil, as the vehicle was known, worked it’s way into the history of the steam engine trains that were soon to be working their way across England’s landscapes.

Steam powered vehicles pop up in Regency stories with enough frequency that the idea of the Puffing Devil isn’t very far fetched.

But what about a fuel powered vehicle? Several countries and a Napoleonic war away, Francois Isaac de Rivaz was inventing the first internal combustion engine in 1807 Switzerland. In 1813 he attempted to turn his electric ignition motor into a vehicle.

He was, for all intents and purposes, unsuccessful, though he did create something that moved.

In 1824 London, though, a steam powered vehicle converted to a gasoline engine managed a brief trip up Shooter’s Hill.

Even the electric car, considered such a modern day advancement, has it’s roots at the fringes of the Regency era.  Robert Anderson, a Scotsman, built the first electric car in the 1830s. The batteries weren’t rechargeable and, just like other self-propelled vehicles of the era, the trip was exceptionally short.

While it was far from conceivable that your favorite Regency hero could tool down to Brighton in his Bugatti, the idea of the car as we know it today was much closer than you might have thought.

For more information about methods of transportation people in the Regency actually used when they wanted to travel reliably and more than a few dozen feet, check out this previous Regency Reflections article on carriages.

What was your first car? Have you ever imagined how different historic eras would be if they had the modern conveniences we take for granted?

Originally posted 2013-11-07 10:00:00.